On a school trip to the Bank of England Museum, we noticed this pledge (below) by the BofE to reduce emissions ‘to net zero by 2040 in all physical operations.’ Limiting targets to physical operations for e.g. electricity use of its building at Threadneedle Street through transition to renewables and energy efficiency in relative terms is not much of a pledge.
..It ignores what is a rapidly growing and what will be THE most significant energy-intensive source by the Bank, yes – AI. This isn’t to say central banks shouldn’t embrace the benefits for security and efficiency purposes, but that it should be included in setting targets for emissions and that it should be transparent on this. Central banks were early adopters of machine learning in macroeconomic analysis and there is huge scope for payment systems, fraud prevention and forecasting, but why isn’t it being considered as a target it in its pledge ?
In its ‘future of money’ exhibition the BofE explicitly notes the utility of AI in finance (below) yet in the very same exhibition space makes a climate pledge that ignores AI in its ‘net zero’ commitments.
Elevate Economics 
Leave a comment