How AI can help break the world's fossil fuel addiction

The current AI boom resembles earlier periods marked by hype and large investments, but the most significant potential goes beyond productivity gains. The global economy has relied for decades on a linear model: extract finite resources, manufacture mostly disposable products, and discard them repeatedly. Petroleum powers packaging, apparel, and cars, while critical minerals underpin modern technologies, creating dependence on concentrated extraction geographies. Supply chain fragility has been exposed by COVID and conflict affecting the Strait of Hormuz. Circularity offers an alternative by regenerating materials already in circulation, reducing extraction and landfill waste. Circularity improves resource efficiency, strengthens supply chains, diversifies material reserves, and improves control over needed materials. Reuse economics increasingly favor circular systems over disposal.

"For half a century, the global economy has run on a simple, destructive model. Extract finite resources from the Earth. Manufacture mostly disposable products. Throw away. Repeat. Petroleum into packaging and apparel. Oil in cars. Critical minerals in the backbone of nearly every modern technology. The list is long, but the pattern is the same. We treat finite resources as if they were infinite, when we all know they are not."

"COVID and the recent conflict around the Strait of Hormuz have made clear how fragile these supply chains really are, and why our dependence on finite resources concentrated in a handful of geographies is no longer a defensible strategy. The linear model strands value and creates strategic dependence."

"Circularity is not a new concept. It refers to an economic model where materials already in circulation are infinitely regenerated, reducing the need for extraction and putting to work what's already above ground, much of it currently bound for landfill. Circularity creates resource efficiency, strengthens supply chains and opens up new material sources. Instead of depending on a small number of extraction hubs, reserves diversify dramatically. Countries and industries gain genuine control over the materials they need."

"And the economics of reusing what's already in circulation, rather than sending it to landfill, are increasingly hard to argue against. According to a new report from Circle Economy and Deloitte, our lack of circularity is costing the world €25.4 tri"

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