COP26: Science and Innovation Day

_{Climate Change and AI playbook}

The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), a global alliance of 18 states, has published a playbook for policymakers on how to use AI to drive climate action. The report “Climate Change and AI” sets out a number of policy recommendations based on the following primary categories:

• Supporting the responsible use of AI for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
• Reducing the negative impacts of AI where it may we used in ways that are incompatible with climate goals.
• Building relevant implementation, evaluation and governance capabilities.

The recommendations are complemented with a series of high potential use cases, which include potential bottlenecks they would face on development and deployment at scale.

_{New “Missions” launched}

Mission Innovation (MI) is a global initiative comprising 22 countries and the EU was launched to catalyse action and investment in research and development in affordable clean energy. It launched its initial “Missions” – projects to accelerate technology and innovation - on power systems, hydrogen and shipping in June this year.

Today, MI launched 4 new Missions on facilitating urban transitions, eliminating emissions from industry, enabling CO2 removal and producing renewable fuels, chemical and materials. The Missions are designed to be consistent with the Breakthrough Agenda announced last week.

_{Embodied carbon in public infrastructure projects}

The Industrial Deep Decarbonisation Initiative (IDDI) is a partnership between Canada, India, Germany, the UAE and the UK to create new markets for low carbon steel and concrete. The IDDI nations have announced they will disclose the embodied carbon of major public infrastructure projects by 2025, with a view to developing a 2030 reduction target.

_{Adaptation Research Alliance launched}

A new global alliance to aiming to increase climate resilience in communities on the front line of climate change launched today. The Adaptation Research Alliance comprises 90 governments, and academic. civil service and private sector organisations. The first landmark programme under the alliance, jointly funded by the UK and Canada, is the Climate Adaptation and Resilience research programme (aka CLARE).

_{Space innovation}

The UK Government has announced funding for a number of projects using satellite technology in climate change and environmental management. Projects include development of high-resolution infrared imaging from space to measure thermal emissions from the built environment and satellite tools to monitor the health of trees.

Author: Kelly Sporn