Everyone talks about AI agents and challenges in reaching sustainability targets today. What if these two topics were combined? Perhaps, it is agentic AI that could drive global sustainability efforts past the point where they stop simply mending the harm already done and start to improve the state of the global environment? Let’s see if that’s possible.
Global Sustainability Decline in 2025
The latest State of the Global Climate report from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) revealed that the negative effects of human-driven climate change surged to alarming levels in 2024, which became the hottest year on record among the last 175 years. The temperature first surpassed the critical warming threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Oceans continued to warm at unprecedented rates, causing more glaciers to melt and threatening coastal settlements and nations. In addition, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations went to their highest levels in 800,000 years. Sadly, scientists believe that some of the changes may be irreversible for many more centuries to come.
Although the Paris Agreement goals are still achievable, the U.S. withdrawal from the worldwide sustainability agreement, while being one of the biggest global CO2 producers and one of the main sponsors for emerging economies in this battle for the future of Earth, creates many obstacles for climate change research, as well as climate change resilience initiatives, predominantly in the most vulnerable parts of the world.
Furthermore, as of 2024, 19 out of 34 countries surveyed failed to fully meet their 2020 emission reduction commitments set in 2009 during the Copenhagen Climate Summit. While 15 countries successfully met their goals, 12 failed outright, and seven more countries technically lowered their carbon emissions at home, but they did it mostly by buying goods from other countries instead of producing them within their own borders. This means the pollution still happened, just somewhere else. This strategy is called “carbon leakage” or “carbon transfer,” and it becomes another important concern for people working on climate policies.
Can AI Help Tackle That?
As we know, the relationship between artificial intelligence and sustainable initiatives is complicated. On one hand, data centres required for AI information processing are quite energy-intensive. On the other hand, however, it also helps improve existing energy systems, making them more efficient, resilient and – paradoxically – sustainable.
To begin with, it is forecast that, by 2030, around half of the global data centre energy demand will come from renewable sources such as solar PV, wind and hydro. Besides, the International Energy Agency estimates that AI applications in the energy sector can optimise oil and gas operations, the work of fossil fuel-powered plants, various manufacturing processes and vehicle operations, ultimately leading to improved energy efficiency and up to 1,400 Mt of CO2 emissions reductions in 2035. The potential reduction is 3-4 times greater than predicted emissions from AI-driven data centres, so the benefits far outweigh potential environmental risks.
AI Agents Come to the Eco-Rescue
AI agents, tools able to handle the most complex tasks without human intervention, have the potential to accelerate the sustainable transformation of modern economies and help countries committed to emissions reduction fulfil their goals quicker and more efficiently. The use of agentic AI is still nascent, but we already have some real-life examples of AI agents serving sustainability purposes.
Fetch.ai & C4E Promote AI-Enabled Energy Communities
Fetch.ai, which focuses on AI and decentralised tech, and C4E, a DePIN L1 Blockchain platform dealing with energy and e-mobility sectors, have teamed up to create smarter, cleaner energy systems using AI agents.
With the help of their smart AI agents, people can share and trade clean energy with their neighbours on a decentralised, transparent P2P marketplace, cut down on waste, and save money. AI agents monitor energy production and consumption in real time, dynamically allocating resources to ensure that energy is shared optimally. Moreover, agents reward users contributing to community energy production for active participation, boosting their motivation to optimise energy resources.
In these smart energy communities, AI also helps EV drivers find the best charging spots and times, based on proximity, driver schedules, and grid load, making vehicle charging faster and cheaper. AI-enabled communication between EVs and chargers provides effortless session start and payment initiation.
Besides, the collaboration offers users the services of personalised energy advisors. These agents create energy plans tailored to one’s lifestyle, help people save energy, join local energy communities, and reduce their bills. Agents never sleep too, they continuously adjust created plans in response to market dynamics, user behaviour, and external factors, ensuring maximum efficiency.
ClickUp Offers AI Agents for Sustainability Insights
The Sustainability Insights AI Agent from ClickUp is designed to help organisations make smarter, eco-friendly decisions by turning complex environmental data into clear, actionable insights. This digital sustainability advisor offers businesses tools to reduce waste, optimise resources, and align operations with current environmental goals.
The AI agent makes the green transition less stressful for firms of different scales. It analyses the company’s energy use, CO2 emissions, and resource consumption to reveal hidden improvement opportunities and create a smart resource management plan. The agent can even compare the business’s sustainability performance against competitors to set potential benchmarks.
Moreover, the tool predicts future environmental impacts, enabling firms to correct their current strategies and mitigate risks. Besides, the ClickUp agent facilitates and automates the ESG reporting routine and compliance tracking so that human employees may focus on more creative and strategic tasks.
AI Agents Powering Cognitive Buildings
While we often talk about CO2 emissions from transportation, manufacturing and agriculture, people often forget to mention a silent polluter that’s always in front of us. Buildings globally account for 30% of energy consumption, 44% of net CO2 emissions, 15% of freshwater usage and 50% of cement consumption. Their number is growing along with the urban population of the planet.
To make residential and business constructions more sustainable, city developers implement various sustainable practices, including the use of domestic natural and carbon-negative materials, energy-saving technology, smart design of ventilation and air-conditioning systems, and city-planning projects that keep sustainability at their core.
However, eco-friendly design itself is not enough. Building maintenance and use also require a lot of energy. Therefore, AI systems are implemented to optimise these processes and make them less energy-intensive. While most of the IoT-powered houses are still not intelligent enough, AI agents are tools that may finally enable truly cognitive buildings – smart constructions that use AI to continuously learn, adapt, and optimise energy usage, comfort, and maintenance. The agents operate as part of a coordinated ecosystem, being able to synchronise and harmonise maintenance and building management operations based on rush-hour and other patterns.
Some of the examples of autonomous or semi-autonomous AI systems used for turning buildings into cognitive structures include:
- BrainBox AI employs advanced agents to optimise HVAC systems in commercial buildings by continuously analysing data to predict and adjust heating and cooling needs in real-time. This proactive approach reduced energy cost up to 25% and significantly decreased greenhouse gas emissions in over 14,000 buildings across more than 20 countries.
- Honeywell Forge platform integrates AI agents to enhance building operations. In collaboration with Google Cloud, Honeywell is developing AI-powered tools that automate tasks for engineers and technicians, aiming to reduce maintenance costs and improve operational productivity. These AI agents can process various data types, automate tasks, reduce project design cycles, help resolve maintenance issues, and more.
- The Edge in Amsterdam is known as “the smartest building in the world.” While it may not employ AI agents in the traditional sense, the building’s systems act in an agent-like way, continuously adjusting environmental settings (heating, cooling, lighting, etc.) based on aggregated data, thus enhancing energy efficiency and occupant comfort. Its AI tools also learn employee habits with time to personalise lighting and temperature conditions. Although today this complex ecosystem has a centralised management, it has a strong foundation for full agentic AI deployment.
Summary
While the world struggles to meet its climate goals and reduce carbon emissions, AI agents are emerging as powerful tools to push sustainability efforts beyond damage control and into meaningful progress. Despite the early stage of adoption, these autonomous digital helpers are already helping people optimise energy use, manage buildings, sustainably run businesses, streamline EV charging, trade solar energy, and make smarter eco-decisions. With the development of this smart tech, the potential is even greater: AI agents could be the very thing that helps us not just fight climate change, but outsmart it.
