New Collaboration About the True Carbon Impact of AI between US-based WattTime, Klimatkollen, Stockholm Environment Institute and Berget AI

A unique collaboration between environmental tech nonprofits Klimatkollen and WattTime, researchers from Stockholm Environment Institute and Swedish data infrastructure provider, Berget AI, will investigate the true carbon impact of AI. The effort hopes to accelerate transparency in the AI sector, a crucial component to measuring the carbon emissions from AI.

– We are proud to lead this collaboration to bring about more transparency about the carbon footprint of AI. Today, organisations that use or build AI tools have almost no way of knowing what measures to take to minimise the environmental impact of their work. We are hoping to change this, says Frida Berry Eklund, Co-founder of Swedish climate data NGO, Klimatkollen.

The organisations will map and measure the environmental impact of the Berget AI’s infrastructure (energy, water, hardware, GPUs etc) as well as the carbon impact of Klimatkollen’s Garbo AI, that runs in the infrastructure. The project will then combine this with the latest research on translating the data into carbon emissions and broader environmental impact.

– We are excited to bring our power grid emissions data expertise to this collaboration. Our aim is to help people, companies, and countries reduce emissions by providing data-driven insights to choose cleaner energy, and that also applies to data center owners and operators, says Gavin McCormick, CEO of WattTime and Cofounder of Climate TRACE.

The lack of transparency from big tech companies hinders the ability to know the full carbon impact of using AI services and applications, such as chatbots that use large language models (LLMs). With an escalating climate crisis, as well as rapidly expanding AI infrastructure and usage, knowing the full carbon cost is vital.

– Whilst AI offers opportunities for societal development and decarbonization, it comes with a non-negligible environmental footprint. This new partnership offers a unique opportunity to advance research about how to govern and minimize the negative effects of AI. Increasing transparency is key to assessing the true impact of AI, says Somya Joshi, Research Director at Stockholm Environment Institute.

The result will be published together with actionable recommendations of how to minimise carbon emissions and broader environmental impact from AI-related work.

– We are uniquely placed to open our AI infrastructure for researchers to see how an AI inference looks like in practice. We want to be able to guide our customers in making better climate decisions when using our services. Sustainability and a transparent AI infrastructure are crucial parts of increasing European data sovereignty, says Andreas Lundmark, CEO of Berget AI.

About Klimatkollen
Klimatkollen is a nonprofit citizens platform that presents climate data about municipalities and companies with the help of AI. The aim is to contribute to more engaged citizens, a more fact-based climate debate and emission reductions in line with the Paris Agreement.

About WattTime
WattTime is a US-based environmental tech nonprofit that empowers all people, companies, policymakers, and countries to slash emissions and choose cleaner energy.

About Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
Stockholm Environment Institute is an international non-profit research institute that tackles climate, environment and sustainable development challenges.

About Berget AI
Berget AI champions AI sovereignty to unlock innovation and growth in Europe. Founded in Sweden in 2024, Berget AI offers inference and AI infrastructure for private and public sector organisations.

For more information, please contact:
Frida Berry Eklund, Klimatkollen, frida@klimatkollen.se, +46 73 620 08 13
Logan Varsano, WattTime, logan@inflectionpointagency.com
Somya Joshi, Research Director, Stockholm Environment Institute, somya.joshi@sei.org, +46 70 103 04 09
Andreas Lundmark, CEO Berget AI, andreas@berget.ai, +46 730 794 471