How Far Can COP31’s Antalya AI Pledge Go Without Binding Rules?

Asking the technology sector to confess its total electricity bill in public is approximately equivalent to asking people to announce their weight across the office PA system. Everyone knows the data exists and everyone knows it would be fascinating to look at, but participation is optional.

That sums up the Antalya Artificial Intelligence Pledge. Türkiye’s COP31 Presidency announced it on 21 September, with a formal launch set for 16 November during COP31, which runs in Antalya until 20 November, and it calls on governments, city councils, investors and businesses to point AI at environmental problems.

Unsurprisingly, the text stresses that every goal in it is voluntary and non-binding.

What Is The Pledge Asking Companies To Do?

The framework breaks down into four categories for corporate and non-state signatories.

Number one is clean power: boosting the proportion of AI and data-centre capacity running on zero- and low-emission electricity, backed by smarter cooling, energy and water conservation.

Number two tackles the full lifecycle. It asks signatories to respect internationally recognised benchmarks when building, purchasing and running AI, while embracing circular habits like repair, reuse and recycling.

Number three deals with transparency, encouraging signatories to measure the environmental footprint of their AI systems and share those findings wherever local regulations permit.

Number four looks further than national borders, requesting computing resources, data access, training and operational backing for AI climate projects across developing economies.

To keep everyone comfortable, an optional annex allows non-state signatories to select specific promises and write in their own deadlines and targets. One sample target asks businesses to calculate and publish the net greenhouse gas impact of a stated percentage of their climate-action AI products, conveniently leaving the percentage box blank for signatories to fill in themselves. Another encourages governments to ask AI vendors for energy and environmental disclosures, which stops well short of requiring them.

AI’s Power Bill Is Climbing Fast

Quantifying the stakes requires very little guesswork. According to International Energy Agency estimates, data centres swallowed around 415 TWh of electricity in 2024. That’s about 1.5% of the world’s electricity, after data-centre demand grew by roughly 12% a year over the previous five years.

In the IEA’s Base Case, data-centre electricity use more than doubles to about 945 TWh by 2030, just under 3% of projected global consumption, and AI is named as the most important driver of that growth. The pledge itself cites IEA analysis showing that electricity use by AI-focused data centres rose by 50% in 2025.

Electricity is only one part of the bill. The pledge puts the challenge as spanning computing infrastructure, water, land and critical materials, which is why it asks for cooling and water efficiency as well as cleaner power.

Where A Voluntary Pledge Runs Out Of Road

Because it doesn’t create new obligations, the pledge can’t set a universal emissions, energy or water standard for AI companies, force anyone to publish their data, or require a data centre to run on low-carbon power by a fixed date. There aren’t penalties or compliance reviews either, and national disclosure, competition and privacy laws apply exactly as they did before.

What it relies on instead is political and reputational pressure. Signatories choose their own commitments, the ITU-convened Green Digital Action initiative is invited to review and showcase progress, and signatories are invited to take stock together at each COP until 2030.

Binding rules work differently. Laws can make companies track standardised metrics, submit to regular audits, meet green procurement thresholds on time and pay a real price for falling short. Because each signatory scribbles in its own percentages and deadlines in the annex, two companies can wear the same green badge while promising vastly different amounts of effort.

The Scorecard Arrives At COP32

With the formal launch still to come on 16 November and COP31 running until 20 November, signatories haven’t been named yet. It’s too early to say whose targets will be ambitious and whose will be blank spaces.

That makes COP32 the first real checkpoint, when signatories are invited to take stock of collective progress for the first time, with further reviews through 2030. Until then, the pledge is only as strong as the names that sign it and the numbers they write in the annex.