Addressing Emissions in a World Facing Unprecedented Challenges
In a world where global emissions have reached an all-time high and climate-related disasters have become five times more frequent in the past half-century, the spotlight has intensified on emissions control and regulation. Large companies, often significant contributors to these emissions, are now facing a critical juncture as they seek practical solutions to meet ambitious emissions reduction targets.
Amidst this environmental challenge, there are solutions being developed, including Artificial Intelligence (AI). The rapid advancements in AI over the last few decades have enabled specialized companies to offer innovative approaches to help corporations reduce their carbon footprint. Aligned Incentives stands out as a pioneer in combatting the climate crisis, as it utilizes its unique emissions tracking software that harnesses artificial intelligence to generate solutions that help companies reduce their environmental impact effectively.
Aligned Incentives’ Revolutionary AITrack Software
Early artificial intelligence for emissions tracking focused on two main areas: Corporate Reporting, efficient in high-level impact reporting but inaccurate in calculating upstream production footprint; and Product Lifecycle Assessment software, considering a product's energy and material inputs to gauge its environmental impact. The challenge of implementing this second type of software on a large scale lies in the substantial increase in data processing, leading to months-long requirements for gathering the necessary data and accurately assessing a company's environmental impact.
Aligned Incentives’ artificial intelligence software, AITrack, marks a significant advancement by integrating two AI data tracking approaches to generate comprehensive lifestyle assessment reports for products. This innovation offers companies, not only a clear path towards sustainability, but also a deeper understanding of how to implement the changes necessary to reach their sustainability goals. AITrack’s unique ability to combine these AI assessments of emissions is a revolutionary step toward achieving and implementing emissions reduction targets. The software compiles a detailed, comprehensive report by aggregating data from a vast shared database, drawing information from all subscribing companies via a dedicated data pipeline in the fraction of the time it takes when done manually. No other companies are currently doing this. The streamlined data-report approach allows for a large-scale implementation of the software analysis for large companies, informing them on how to effectively reduce their emissions.
In an interview with the CEO of Aligned Incentives, Yann Risz, I inquired further about how this data pipeline works. Risz informed me that the supply data pipeline functions based on a five-step process.
Risz shed light on the meticulous five-step process that the data pipeline employs, providing insight into the actionable steps that AITrack provides for achieving sustainability goals:
Develop an insightful central repository of information built from 300,000-400,000 LCA models.
Utilize the database to gain insight into what specific actions companies should focus on to reach their emissions goals.
Use the repository to gain access to the world’s biggest distributor companies without incurring additional costs.
Develop the interface to go to all the suppliers of these large companies.
Replace the model data that the AI is using to generate the initial reports for how to reduce emissions with actual data, which allows Aligned Incentives to track how much annual progress each company is making.
(Risz, Yann. Interview. Conducted by Holden Hilal. September 18, 2023)
AITrack-generated reports enable companies to comprehend both their upstream emissions (emissions from product creation and the entire supply chain) and their downstream emissions. For instance, it illustrates the impact of post-production waste (downstream emissions), like the impact of uneaten McDonald's food ending up in landfills and emitting greenhouse gases as it decomposes. The software then provides a clear roadmap for reducing these emissions. The software also assesses the financial risk for the companies, which answers the question of whether or not companies will be able to continue practicing their current production methods (e.g., McDonald's continuing to use beef from cattle ranches), tracking how sustainable the practices are and how they will need to evolve as the climate crisis continues to unfold. It makes these assessments based on a projected evolution of the climate crisis, with projections spanning years into the future.
Uniqueness of Artificial Intelligence Approach
Because the integration of artificial intelligence in companies is such a recent phenomenon, there are currently no other companies like Aligned Incentives that are utilizing AI to help businesses understand how to reduce their emissions. The decision to combine Corporate Reporting Artificial Intelligence with Product Lifestyle Assessment Software Artificial Intelligence is so cutting-edge that no other companies are currently practicing the same approach and are therefore unable to provide the same types of product lifestyle reports that Aligned Incentives’ AI comes up with. This makes Aligned Incentives an extremely important and cutting-edge business in the industry.
Interestingly, Aligned Incentives is pioneering an industry where many companies already receive environmental-sustainability advice from within their companies, from in-house Chief Sustainability Officers. However, these advisors lack the sheer amount of information and data that AITrack possesses, leading companies to make decisions that may not be the most effective in reducing their emissions or that lack attainable emissions reduction goals. This lack of access to knowledge when making decisions about how to spend money when investing in environmental solutions leads to not only more ineffective choices from Sustainability Officers but also, does not enable the company to fully reap the benefits of attempting to switch to more sustainable practices. A company’s alternative to insourcing its sustainability strategy is to leverage large consulting firms that specialize in this type of data analysis. However, the problem is these large companies have not yet built AI-based applications that are on par with what Aligned Incentives has built. It is this gap between the available in-house and outsourced resources and the comprehensive data-driven insights provided by AITrack that defines the uniqueness and significance of Aligned Incentives’ pioneering approach and technology.
Real-World Success Story: Transforming Corporate Relations
An example of the success of Aligned Incentives’ software involves a leading apparel company operating with a highly ambitious sustainability goal yet struggling with communication and data flow to their suppliers. The company sought help from Aligned Incentives, and with the assistance of their AI Track software, they identified the most crucial areas to enhance their supplier relations. Aligned Incentives quickly matched their client with their key suppliers to help resolve their issue with supplier relations by utilizing the innovative AITrack. A process, which was once conducted manually and took weeks, is now performed by AI in a matter of minutes, thanks to the Generative AITrack Software. This software is reshaping how companies interact with their suppliers and customers, something that is becoming increasingly more important as a growing number of companies shift toward more sustainable practices in the evolving market.
Other Companies Using AI to Reduce Environmental Impacts
Aligned Incentives is not the only company using Artificial Intelligence to reduce emissions. In fact, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Alphabet’s Google and American Airlines have used AI to enhance their sustainability efforts. Specifically, American Airlines has used AI technology to assist in reducing their aircraft vapor trails, which are a significant contributor to global warming. Google has also applied AI to predict river floods and suggest eco-friendly routes through its mapping services. Moreover, Amazon, a global giant, has joined the list of companies leveraging AI to minimize their environmental impact, committing to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. Furthermore, a San Francisco-based startup called Verse is simplifying access to clean power for companies through AI. The diverse applications of AI demonstrate the expansive potential of this technology in the fight against climate change, from streamlining product transportation to generating insights on projected environmental changes. AI is now employed to create predictions of the future world based on current emissions and efforts to combat climate change, offering a significantly more profound understanding of how effectively humanity is mitigating the climate crisis.
The integration of AI to reduce emissions by major companies like Amazon signifies a significant advancement in AI's role in leading humanity's fight against the climate crisis. By utilizing shared databases that are constantly updating based on new data from thousands of companies worldwide, it is evident that AI will become an increasingly more powerful tool in providing an understanding of how humanity can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent the climate crisis from worsening. It is only with the use of innovative, cutting-edge technology from companies like Aligned Incentives that humans will be able to mitigate and eventually reverse the effects of climate change to ensure the planet remains habitable and that the Earth will survive the climate crisis.
| Holden Hilal
