Towards a Health-Based Power Grid Optimization in the Artificial Intelligence Era

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Battiloro, Claudio, Guidi, Gianluca, Bargagli-Stoffi, Falco J., Dominici, Francesca
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Battiloro, Claudio
Guidi, Gianluca
Bargagli-Stoffi, Falco J.
Dominici, Francesca
author_facet Battiloro, Claudio
Guidi, Gianluca
Bargagli-Stoffi, Falco J.
Dominici, Francesca
contents The electric power sector is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the world. In recent years, there has been an unprecedented increase in electricity demand driven by the so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution. Although AI has and will continue to have a transformative impact, its environmental and health impacts are often overlooked. The standard approach to power grid optimization aims to minimize CO$_2$ emissions. In this paper, we propose a new holistic paradigm. Our proposed optimization directly targets the minimization of adverse health outcomes under energy efficiency and emission constraints. We show the first example of an optimal fuel mix allocation problem aiming to minimize the average number of adverse health effects resulting from exposure to hazardous air pollutants with constraints on the average and marginal emissions. We argue that this new health-based power grid optimization is essential to promote truly sustainable technological advances that align both with global climate goals and public health priorities.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_09029
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards a Health-Based Power Grid Optimization in the Artificial Intelligence Era
Battiloro, Claudio
Guidi, Gianluca
Bargagli-Stoffi, Falco J.
Dominici, Francesca
Signal Processing
Systems and Control
Applications
The electric power sector is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the world. In recent years, there has been an unprecedented increase in electricity demand driven by the so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution. Although AI has and will continue to have a transformative impact, its environmental and health impacts are often overlooked. The standard approach to power grid optimization aims to minimize CO$_2$ emissions. In this paper, we propose a new holistic paradigm. Our proposed optimization directly targets the minimization of adverse health outcomes under energy efficiency and emission constraints. We show the first example of an optimal fuel mix allocation problem aiming to minimize the average number of adverse health effects resulting from exposure to hazardous air pollutants with constraints on the average and marginal emissions. We argue that this new health-based power grid optimization is essential to promote truly sustainable technological advances that align both with global climate goals and public health priorities.
title Towards a Health-Based Power Grid Optimization in the Artificial Intelligence Era
topic Signal Processing
Systems and Control
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.09029