Paul Murphy Challenges AI Climate Claims: "The Fossil Fuel Playbook All Over Again"

Thanks a lot. Maybe just to start with either Professor Daly or Professor Stevens, one of the things we've heard from the government and from the kind of data centre supporters or sorry AI supporters and advocates is that AI is going to help us deal with climate change. So a quote from the KPMG website, 97% of Irish and global executives said they believe AI is a net positive for accelerating progress towards net zero goals. Do you think that is accurate? Are there significant positives that arise with AI in terms of tackling climate change? I'll go first. Thank you. I believe that those claims are largely unevidenced. The impacts that research that I've presented and that Professor Stevens has presented shows, demonstrates material climate impacts that we can quantify and demonstrate right now. The theoretical benefits of AI for climate change are largely speculative or unevidenced or if they have occurred, it has been not through this large scale, large language model, it is through smaller, far less energy intensive models that Professor Parnell has discussed. So this is one of the narratives that I think is false. I would just add that this future speculation is kind of what the whole AI hype is based on. Oh, once we get the AGI, this next level, we will be able to you can ask it any question and it will solve every problem in the world, right? And it's really ideological that's not based on science. And I think it's also really important to note that all the research on climate obstruction of fossil fuel industry, what they did, the way they were able had been so effective is they put themselves as the solution to the problem, right? Fossil fuel industry will create carbon capture and storage and we will solve the climate crisis with our own technology. And that's exactly the same playbook that AI is, the big tech companies are saying. We, once we get this advanced, sophisticated, futuristic technology, then we will be able to solve these problems. And it's a self delusional kind of reinforcing narrative that is really not backed by the science. Thanks a lot. The parallels are striking with the fossil fuel industry. Just to go back to Professor Daly in terms of this projection of the impact of the large energy users policy, which is very, very striking, the fact that they could end up using more electricity than the whole rest of the economy and society combined. And I think, you know, you put your finger on it in terms of the question of policy coherence. How can it be that the CRU agreed such a policy that flies in the face of not just policy but law in terms of our obligations under the Climate Act? It goes to section 15 of the Climate Act, which requires state bodies insofar as practical align their operations with the achievement of our climate goals. And in its finalisation of the LEU connection policy, CRU determined that its legal advice said that section 15 did not apply to it. So that is a major, I suppose, determination that will be tested, for example, through the cool glass judgment. It is a legal interpretation. But I mean, we would ask the question, if the CRU is not bound to meet or is not responsible for operating in a way that meets carbon budgets, then who is? And in your paper, you have estimates about the growth of gas demand, the growth of electricity demand and so on. Do you have any figures about the percentage of our carbon emissions that data centres will be responsible for if we went on the trajectory that we're currently on? So we're currently at 3 to 4% of our carbon emissions are coming from data centres. Yes, so the table that I append on my opening statement, the second line of carbon budgets and sectoral emission ceilings, so our electricity sector has a target of meeting, of reducing emissions to 3 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030 because we don't have a climate action plan, we don't have ceilings after 2030. But according to my analysis, our current annual energy-related emissions are around 35 million tonnes, just for context. So the fourth column there shows that the additional annual emissions from my analysis would be 3 million tonnes, that is the entire target of the electricity sector, and 6 million tonnes by 2040. So we spoke earlier on, Senator Higgins spoke about the tiny amount of carbon budget that we have left globally. Effectively, Ireland does not have any carbon budget left in terms of any kind of fair allocation of the global goal. So effectively, this policy or the scenario that my research shows would be that this policy would lead to a rise in emissions from the electricity sector rather than a fall which is contrary to all of the sectoral ceilings and carbon budgets.