Opening Keynote

Green AI Summit 2025: Opening Remarks & Keynote Speeches - Setting the Vision

Session Dates: April 25-26, 2025 Locations: Harvard University & Boston University

Overview:

The Green AI Summit 2025 opened with compelling remarks and keynote addresses from high-level leaders spanning government, international organizations, academia, and university administration. These speeches set the stage for two days of intensive discussion, outlining the critical challenges and immense opportunities at the intersection of artificial intelligence and global sustainable development.

Day 1: Opening Remarks at Harvard University

• Senator Edward Markey (Video): The Massachusetts Senator delivered a powerful message via video, underscoring the climate crisis's urgency. He acknowledged AI's potential benefits (e.g., forecasting) but forcefully highlighted its environmental downsides, including massive energy and water needs, resource extraction impacts, and e-waste generation. He introduced his AI Environmental Impacts Act as a necessary step toward understanding and managing these consequences to protect environmental health.

• Secretary Tomas Lamanauskas (Online, ITU): The Deputy Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union offered a global perspective. He discussed AI's significant economic potential alongside risks like bias and inequality. He emphasized AI's dual role in both consuming vast energy resources and potentially optimizing systems to reduce emissions, highlighting the need for international standards (which ITU helps develop) and concerted efforts like the Green Digital Action initiative to address issues like e-waste and leverage AI responsibly for climate goals.

• Vice Provost James Stock (Harvard): Harvard's Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability framed the challenge through the lens of balancing economic growth, energy affordability, reliability, and decarbonization. Pointing to worsening climate indicators, he argued against accepting these as trade-offs and advocated for using AI to find synergistic solutions, particularly in grid optimization and EV integration, while remaining mindful of AI's potential negative uses.

• David Havelick & Sarah Craig (Harvard): Representing Harvard's operational sustainability efforts, Associate Director Havelick (Office for Sustainability) and Senior Director Craig (HUIT IT Operations) outlined the University's climate commitments (fossil fuel-free by 2050) and the practical work of the Sustainable IT Committee. They showcased initiatives ranging from the MGHPCC data center collaboration to establishing IT standards and tackling e-waste.

• Jerry Huang (Green AI Institute): The Founder and President of the Green AI Institute welcomed attendees, introduced the Institute's mission of uniting diverse stakeholders, and officially launched the Institute's second major report, the "White Paper on Global Data Center Siting Policy and Practice," offering a comprehensive look at the factors shaping AI infrastructure globally.

Day 1: Keynote Speech

• Zhaoyang (Roger) Wang (Online, Alibaba Cloud): The General Manager of Global Data Centers at Alibaba Cloud shared the company's "AI+Sustainability" vision and best practices. He detailed Alibaba's open-source AI model strategy, their ambitious 2030 carbon neutrality and clean energy goals for cloud operations, their development of sustainable data center infrastructure, and their use of AI to enhance grid resilience and decarbonize industries. He also mentioned the ANGEL research lab collaboration with NTU Singapore.

Day 2: Keynote Speeches at Boston University

• Dean Elise Morgan (BU Engineering): Welcoming attendees on Day 2, the ad Interim Dean highlighted Boston University's commitment to engineering for societal impact and the power of convergent research – bringing diverse disciplines together, as exemplified by the summit itself – to tackle complex challenges like sustainable AI development.

• Melissa Lavinson (MA EEA): The Executive Director of the Massachusetts Office of Energy Transformation discussed the state's nation-leading climate goals and the significant challenges posed by simultaneously electrifying sectors like transport and buildings while accommodating the surge in energy demand from AI and data centers. She emphasized the critical need for energy efficiency, demand management, and innovation to ensure an affordable, reliable, and clean energy transition.

• President Emeritus Robert A. Brown (BU): Professor Brown provided historical context on university research collaborations in computing, citing the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHpcc) as a successful model now serving as the foundation for the new state AI initiative. He issued a powerful call for deeper collaboration among universities in research and data infrastructure to maintain leadership and address grand challenges, especially in the face of potential funding pressures.

• Professor Yonggang Wen (Online, NTU Singapore): Offering an international perspective, Professor Wen discussed the "twin transition" (digital and sustainable), analyzing the sharp rise in energy consumption driven by AI training and inference. He explored potential technical solutions (from software-defined green computing to hydrogen and even space-based data centers) and AI's positive role in optimizing other industries, suggesting an inflection point where AI's benefits could outweigh its costs. He introduced his "AI was Product" framework for planning successful AI projects.

These opening sessions collectively established the summit's core themes: acknowledging AI's environmental paradox, charting pathways for technological and policy innovation, emphasizing the necessity of cross-sector collaboration, and framing the pursuit of Green AI as critical for achieving global sustainable development goals.