News Talks podcast: Could spiralling GenAI use derail universities' net zero efforts?

Back in 2021, ahead of the COP26 Climate Summit, more than 1,000 universities and higher education colleges worldwide pledged to become completely carbon neutral by 2050, with some even setting a target of 2030.

And this list included 168 UK institutions.

In line with that, the representative body, Universities UK, made a sector-wide climate commitment for universities to set targets for reducing scope one, scope two, and scope three emissions.

So that's sources within their direct control, but also emissions from the making and transporting of products and services that they use.

Most UK universities now have whole teams dedicated to improving sustainability and put out annual reports on their progress in cutting carbon emissions.

And huge progress has been made across many institutions.

Notably LSE, the London School of Economics and Political Science, was declared carbon neutral for its measured emissions in 2021.

And measured is the key word here, as this was a result of cutting direct emissions by 44% over 15 years.

And to offer another example, the University of Reading has cut emissions by 63%.

That's between 2009 and 2025.

I could pick out many others where tangible progress can be shown.

However, there is a potential fatal flaw.

Since November 2022, when ChatGPT was first released to the general public, there's been an exponential rise in the use of generative AI tools across society and indeed across higher education.

And as anyone who works in the sector knows, this has resulted in much hand-wringing and debate relating to academic integrity, graduate employment, to the authenticity of learning, data privacy, misinformation, the reliability of the AI outputs.

The one concern that is notable by its absence seems to be that of the environmental cost.

And rest assured, there is a cost.

So why are universities seemingly looking the other way on AI's carbon outlay? Our reporter, Juliet Roussel, investigated this question, and she is here with me today to bring us the latest on the evolving relationship between universities and AI and the implications for net zero.