AI and Sustainability Workshop

9h30 – 9h50: Coffee

09h50 – 10h00: Welcome remarks
- Ecole normale supérieure
- AI and Society Institute
- Observatory on the Environmental Footprint of AI

10h00 – 10h40: Are all AI use cases worth it?

- 15 min - Tristan Coignon, Postdoctoral Researcher in Computer Sciences, Observatory on the Environmental Footprint of AI
The usage and environmental impacts of AI video generation: In the past years, AI video generation has gone from a technology barely able to produce anything meaningful to a fully-fledged tool used by millions across the world. However, generating AI video comes at a steep resource cost and the broader environmental impacts of AI video generation as a technology, and their evolution over time, are still understudied. As such, in this presentation, we aim to model and estimate the conservative worldwide impacts of AI video generation over the years.

- 15 min - Antonia Marcheva, Postdoctoral Researcher in Economics, Observatory on the Environmental Footprint of AI
Costs and benefits of generative AI in the global economy: The discussion of the impact of generative AI is divided into groups who believe it will primarily improve lives, and those who believe the environmental and social consequences will overwhelm any positive impact. We use a state-of-the-art model of the global economy to explore the tension between the environmental costs, the increase in useful economic goods (e.g. healthcare and education), and the change in the structure of the economy (e.g. jobs). For environmental costs, we focus on the increase in emissions from the electricity sector, both from direct electricity use and the failure to phase out the most polluting electricity generation due to increased demand. We also pay particular attention to which countries receive the benefits of generative AI and which ones bear the costs.

- 10 min: Q&A

10h40 – 11h15: Panel - Anticipating token consumption
Retrieval pipelines, reasoning models and agentic workflows multiply the number of tokens behind a single user request. Organisations deploying generative AI can thus underestimate how many tokens (and energy) they will actually consume. This panel brings together organisations that have had to put their token consumption under management: how they forecast it, where the overruns came from, and what they changed in response.

11h15 – 11h35: Break

11h35 – 12h15: Challenges of the data center expansion

- 15 min – Loup Cellard, Postdoctoral Researcher in Sociology, Observatory on the Environmental Footprint of AI
The many barriers to waste heat reuse from data centres: In order to improve the urban development of data centres, operators are trying to give something back to local municipalities. Data centres can then supply heat to a closed local loop or an urban heating network. How can we explain the difficulty in matching the heat supply from data centres with the demand for decarbonised energy in local areas? The talk will present the results of an empirical study conducted in France since January 2026.

- 15 min – Clément Gasull, Postdoctoral Research at CSI, Mines Paris – PSL, i3
Grid connection regimes for data centers in France: The growth in the number and size of (projects for) data centers required for the training and operation of generative artificial intelligence models entails unprecedented volumes and capacities of electricity. While expected to act as partners in the development of data centers, electricity grids are simultaneously confronting historical challenges of innovation and maintenance in order to meet public decarbonization objectives, both in terms of the electrification of energy uses and the integration of new renewable generation capacities. This twofold context places the question of how data centers gain access to electricity grids among the core issues of AI governance. This presentation contributes to addressing this research and public debate issue by providing an overview of the connection regimes governing how data centers connect to electricity grids. It draws on a qualitative analysis of the making of public action in France in support of data center development.

- 10 min - Q&A

12h15 – 12h55: Keynote (40 min)
- Cecilia Rikap, Associate Professor in Economics, University College London, author of The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud

12h55 – 13h: Closing remarks