AI, Climate, and Transparency: Operationalizing and Improving the AI Act

This paper critically examines the AI Act’s provisions on climate-related transparency, highlighting significant gaps and challenges in its implementation. We identify key shortcomings, including the exclusion of energy consumption during AI inference, the lack of coverage for indirect greenhouse gas emissions from AI applications, and the lack of standard reporting methodology. The paper proposes a novel interpretation to bring inference-related energy use back within the Act’s scope and advocates for public access to climate-related disclosures to foster market accountability and public scrutiny. Cumulative server level energy reporting is recommended as the most suitable method. We also suggest broader policy changes, including sustainability risk assessments and renewable energy targets, to better address AI’s environmental impact through transparency measures that facilitate competition among model providers and allow conscious consumer decisions. Finally, we provide first insights on the General-Purpose AI Model Code of Practice as it relates to climate reporting.