BIOMES: "Sustainable AI – is it possible?" presented by Elaine Grunewald, Lecturer, Yale School of the Environment

About the Seminar: The AI value chain is extensive, complex and varied, ranging from minerals and materials, to hardware to infrastructure to models and user applications. There are distinct sustainability issues across this chain. Often the public associates AI sustainability issues to be data center centric, when in fact the picture is far more complex, encompassing energy and water issues, but also the profound effects on people, the economy and society more broadly. At the same time, the magnitude of the sustainability challenges we face, and the fact that we have exceeded several planetary boundaries - ranging from climate change to oceans to biodiversity – will likely require AI to solve. This talk will breakdown the issues, and outline the two sides of the sustainability AI coin – risk and opportunity – from a business lens, building on Elaine’s more than 2 decades of experience in the corporate sustainability space. About the Speaker: Elaine is a global operating executive with more than 25 years of experience leading technology-driven organizations through growth, transformation, and complexity across multinational, start up, and board environments. Her focus is on tech and digitalization, venture building and investing, public affairs and partnerships, and corporate development. Her advocacy for the private sector’s role in solving sustainability challenges has been a red thread throughout her career. She has held senior executive roles at scale, including Senior Vice President and Executive Team member at Ericsson, where she led global sustainability, public affairs, and stakeholder strategy and built an organization of 150+ professionals operating across regulated and geopolitically complex markets. In that role, she worked closely with the Board, CEO, investors, governments, and customers, positioning sustainability, trust, and responsible technology as drivers of long-term competitiveness and growth. More recently, she served as President of the Tonomus Venture Studio, the venture-building arm of NEOM, Saudi Arabia’s future-focused development. She led a global, multidisciplinary team responsible for building and launching a portfolio of AI- and data-driven ventures. Using a hands-on operating model, her team incubated and scaled early-stage companies across sectors including fintech and digital identity, workforce authentication, biotech, satellite-enabled services, climate tech, and responsible AI. Elaine co-founded two companies - the AI Sustainability Center, developing practical tools to help companies address the scaling of Responsible AI, and Emphco AB, a platform she uses to advise numerous companies, funds and CEOs and to make clean tech investments. Alongside operating roles, she brings board and capital-markets experience, having served on public company boards and as an independent director of a Nasdaq-listed SPAC. Non-profit boards include the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative & the International Women’s Forum Sweden. She is the co-author of the book Sustainability Leadership, a Swedish Approach to Transforming Your Company, Your Industry and the World (2020, Palgrave Macmillan). She was also a contributor to the anthology Ethics at Work: Dilemmas of the Near Future and How Your Organization Can Solve Them (2022). Elaine is a frequent speaker including the World Economic Forum, United Nations, LEAP, SXSW, tech industry events and has been engaged in the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. She has held guest lectures at multiple universities including Columbia University Business School and Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Business School. She has received several awards for her work with sustainability and women's leadership.