Watch Now: Spring 2022 Energy of the Future Webinar Series

Series explores artificial intelligence’s potential for sustainability.

Join the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy (now the Institute for Global Sustainability) for this spring’s Energy of the Future webinar series as we focus on understanding artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) potential for supporting sustainability. This three-part series will discuss the future of smart technologies for sustainable energy, mobility, and homes, providing insights into the challenges and opportunities ahead. Audience Q&A will follow the panelist presentations.

Co-sponsored by the GridWise Alliance, BU Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, and the BU Energy & Sustainability Club.

Understanding AI’s Potential for Sustainability: Smart Homes and Energy Justice

June 3, 2022 | 11 am – 12:15 pm ET

Smart home technologies, coupled with advanced algorithms and AI, have the potential to transform not only our domestic lives but have significant effects on future markets, technology and innovation patterns, and sustainability challenges. This seminar explores both the promise and perils of these emerging technologies, examining important topics that include justice, vulnerability, gender, and social attitudes and awareness. It points to the urgent need for better policy behind the technology, and it also illustrates how not all emerging smart home innovations will align with important climate and environmental goals.

Recordings

Understanding AI’s Potential for Sustainability: Sustainable Mobility

April 29, 2022 | 11 am – 12:15 pm ET

The next frontier of sustainable mobility is here. As electric vehicles proliferate, AI has opened up many new possibilities for on-demand shared mobility services—both public and private—that could cut costs, energy consumption, and travel times by reducing congestion. Harnessing this potential poses many challenges, however, starting with how to effectively anticipate and plan for the changes ahead. Because of the rapid advances in AI-based technologies and the growing recognition of climate change challenges, decisions need to be made quickly and dramatic action is required.

This webinar delves into the public and private decision-making process that’s facing us, with the goal of designing practical structures for future mobility and grid systems that evolve in lockstep for optimal performance.

Understanding AI’s Potential for Sustainability: Building a Smart Power Grid

March 18, 2022 | 11 am – 12:15 pm ET

The future of sustainable energy hinges on large-scale grid infrastructure updates to manage new sources of power, enabling the integration of renewable energy, energy storage, and distributed energy resources. Looking forward, advances in AI, machine learning (ML), and data sciences hold great promise for building a smart grid—helping to predict and prevent infrastructure failures, forecast production fluctuations from renewables, and respond to changes in demand or pricing for electricity. This webinar discusses the challenges and opportunities around the use of ML and AI for dynamic management of a clean and resilient grid, including the all-important question of how these technologies could affect overall energy efficiency.