Paris Olympics will use Alibaba’s AI-powered energy-saving tool to analyse venue power use

The Paris Olympics will use an AI-powered energy-management tool from Chinese internet firm Alibaba Group Holding to analyse electricity consumption in competition venues, as the organisers aim to pull off the first carbon-neutral edition of the Games.

The Hangzhou-based company announced on Monday that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will deploy its Energy Expert, a data-driven tool, to measure and analyse power usage at all 35 locations across Paris during the games, which take place from July 26 to August 11.

Using deep learning-based artificial intelligence (AI) models from Alibaba’s cloud unit, the tool will produce venue-specific forecasts and recommendations based on real-time power consumption data. This aims to help future editions of the Games optimise energy demand and minimise power waste, according to Alibaba.

Alibaba said it will also analyse historical data from previous Games, including London 2012, Pyeongchang 2018 and Tokyo 2020, to offer more comprehensive analysis of energy-consumption trends and enable better power consumption planning for future Games.

“Electricity consumption is a large contributor to the Olympic Games’ carbon emissions,” Ilario Corna, chief information and technology officer at the IOC, said in a statement on Monday. “With Energy Expert, we can now forecast our energy-related impacts well into the future and accurately measure our progress.”

The organisers of the Paris Olympics have set ambitious targets to cut event-related carbon emissions in half compared with previous editions and offset the rest of the unavoidable emissions by financing projects such as reforestation, forest preservation and renewable energy, making the Games the “greenest” in Olympic history.