AI LAW The International Legal Framework for the Environmental Sustainability of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI LAW The International Legal Framework for the Environmental Sustainability of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Summary/Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) systems rely on massive informational resources, while simultaneously offering tools for their optimization and raising acute sustainability concerns related to energy consumption, water use, critical minerals and the generation of electronic waste. Situated within the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the environmental sustainability requirements of AI form the subject of a rapidly expanding body of hard law (the AI Act, the Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law of 5 September 2024) and soft law instruments (recommendations, resolutions, charters). Significant contributions in this regard have been made by the OECD (the 2022 working paper and the 2025 report on measuring the environmental and energy impact of computation and AI applications), the UNECE (the Recommendations of 25 June 2025 for an ethical and sustainable AI), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP/EA.7/Res.9 of 12 December 2025 on the environmental sustainability of AI systems) and, above all, the emerging multilateral framework on the environmental sustainability of AI systems prefigured by recent action at the UN General Assembly. Still under construction, the international legal framework on the environmental sustainability of AI seeks to harmonise, correlate and adapt the objectives and requirements of sustainable development to the specific environmental impact of new technologies in general, and of AI applications in particular. The concept of sustainable AI, promoted especially from a European perspective as a “third way”, implies two distinct elements: reducing the ecological footprint of AI and deploying AI for the resolution of environmental problems. From the standpoint of legal consistency, soft law regulations tend to converge gradually, and to different degrees, towards binding rules, against the background of major geostrategic approaches to the role of law in the global governance of AI. Located at the intersection of environmental law and AI law, the legal regime of the environmental sustainability of artificial intelligence becomes an international concern and an indispensable component of the global governance of new technologies. The European model promoted by the AI Act and its subsequent regulations tends to extend its reach by virtue of the “Brussels effect”. The legal framework for circumscribing the environmental impact of AI is in the process of being constituted, combining existing rules with the emergence of new specific regulations, asserting new principles and accrediting specific legal instruments of intervention.

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