Enno Schroder and Kornelis Blok receive planning grant from the Volkswagen Foundation

News - 18 February 2020 - Webredactie-TBM

Enno Schroder and Kornelis Blok have been awarded a “planning grant” from the VW Foundation. In this exploratory research project a team of economists and engineers investigates where, how and why AI might support or obstruct the sustainability transition.

AI can help us tackle the climate crisis and bring down carbon dioxide emissions -- for instance, it promises to reduce the electricity demand of buildings and to better match the demand for electricity with the variable supply of electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar. But AI is not inherently "green". Mining companies use AI to support the search for and the exploration of unconventional fossil fuel deposits. This exploratory research is a necessary first step towards offering policy solutions that address new AI-specific trade-offs between ecological and social sustainability and exploiting potential synergies emerging along these lines. Besides TU Delft, the University Duisburg-Essen, the International Labour Organisation, and Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy are involved as partners in this project.

About the planning grant
The planning grant of the Volkswagen Foundation enables research teams from different institutions to gather around a topic and develop ideas, questions, and methods for a larger research project. The purpose of a planning grant is the development of a research proposal for which a larger grant may be awarded eventually.