Sustainability Reporting with Generative AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has pervasively impacted numerous sectors, demonstrating its transformative capabilities. By focusing on the interactive delivery and collaborative production of reports, underpinned by Generative AI, the AI-RISE project tackles a promising frontier. It aims to redefine how sustainability experts produce, share, and apply knowledge. The value and impact of AI-RISE innovations will be assessed in sustainability reporting use cases with an advisory board of scientists, communicators, and corporate/NGO stakeholders in the Energy and Environment domain.
Scientific Communication
The scientific community generates timely knowledge to help societies prepare for and respond to climate change, addressing complex issues related to risks, adaptation, and mitigation strategies. However, only a fraction of this knowledge translates into action, due to the knowledge-action gap. To bridge this gap, scientists call for innovative, collaborative approaches to sustainability reporting that support mutual exchange between science and society. A new generation of scientific reports, including the UniNEtZ Options Report and the APCC’s AAR2, focuses on practical insights for specific target groups. AI-RISE innovations will amplify the impact of these flagship publications, overcoming the last mile of knowledge transfer.
Corporate Communication
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires large companies to disclose information on their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices. This is crucial for the energy sector, which must decarbonize and transition to sustainable, low-carbon energy systems. Regulations require the transparent disclosure of climate-related data and gradual reductions in emissions. AI-RISE will support the energy sector in meeting this obligation. It aims to increase transparency and develop AI-driven methods to streamline the report-writing process. Based on the Storypact AI Editor, these methods will utilize recommendation algorithms to identify related work, categorized by relevance for each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Thereby, AI-RISE aims to promote well-informed, credible sustainability reporting that considers and promotes scientific evidence.
Increasing the Impact of Sustainability Reporting
The overarching goal is to enhance decision-making to achieve climate neutrality through effective mechanisms that translate available knowledge into actionable steps. Increasing the impact of high-quality reporting is pivotal in driving the necessary energy transformation. While the use cases of AI-RISE focus on Austrian stakeholders, the project will also incorporate feedback from international experts, setting the stage for post-project exploitation on a global scale. webLyzard’s previous international projects, including the SDG Intelligence platform developed for the United Nations Environment Programme and a Visual Navigator for the Climate.gov site of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have shown that the sustainability sector and science communicators in particular need novel methods to amplify the impact of public outreach activities, and to capture granular feedback on the effectiveness of these activities.
