As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes Europe’s economy, it will either accelerate our green ambitions or undermine them. Two new European Environment Agency (EEA) briefings explore how deliberate policy steering can ensure a double dividend and how the trade-offs in deploying these technologies can be navigated at a time when environmental pressures must fall.
Digitalisation and AI can deliver measurable environmental benefits when aligned with sustainability objectives, show the EEA briefings Navigating Europe’s twin transition — opportunities and challenges of digitalisation in the green transition and Artificial intelligence and sustainable consumption in Europe.
Digital technologies can enhance environmental data collection and analysis, support more efficient industrial processes, enable smarter energy and transport systems, and influence consumption and procurement decisions towards lower‑carbon and more resource‑efficient options.
In consumer markets, AI has the potential to shape choices by improving product and service information and supporting more sustainable public and private procurement. Across value chains more broadly, it can also help optimise supply chains and logistics towards lower-resource outcomes.
At the same time, the briefings underline the transformative nature of AI and digitalisation. As rapidly expanding and system‑shaping technologies, they are reshaping how economies function, how consumption decisions are made and how value chains are organised. Without clear policy direction, these changes risk increasing energy and material demand, reinforcing resource-intensive business models, deepening strategic dependencies and exacerbating social inequalities. Efficiency gains alone are therefore unlikely to reduce overall environmental pressures.
The rapid expansion of data centres is itself driving rising demand for energy, water and critical raw materials — as data presented in the briefing ‘Artificial intelligence and sustainable consumption in Europe’ shows. The briefing ‘Navigating Europe’s twin transition’ reinforces this picture, finding that data centres, networks and devices together generate a growing environmental footprint that efficiency gains alone are unlikely to offset.
The analysis comes at a time of rising geopolitical competition, economic uncertainty and strategic dependencies. In this environment, digital technologies and AI are increasingly seen as central to Europe’s competitiveness, resilience and strategic autonomy. The EEA stresses that navigating the twin transition — the combined green and digital transitions — is therefore not only an environmental challenge, but also a strategic one, requiring deliberate choices about how innovation is steered and regulated.
The findings are particularly relevant for the implementation of key EU legislative and policy frameworks linking digital transformation with sustainability and competitiveness. These include the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, which establishes rules for the development and use of AI systems across the EU, as well as broader EU strategies that place digitalisation at the core of economic competitiveness while reinforcing the objectives of the green transition.
As the EEA briefings highlight, closer alignment between digital policy, consumption‑related measures and environmental objectives will be essential to ensure that Europe’s digital transformation supports climate neutrality, resource efficiency and long‑term resilience.
