IBM’s Chief Sustainability Officer on AI, Efficiency, and the Future of Sustainable Business

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how businesses operate — but it is also reshaping how companies think about sustainability. Christina Shim, Chief Sustainability Officer at IBM, joins Climate Rising to discuss how AI, cloud infrastructure, and emerging technologies like quantum computing are transforming corporate sustainability strategies. Drawing on her background across consulting, government, investing, startups, and technology, Christina explains how IBM is redefining sustainability from a compliance function into a core business capability. The conversation explores the “efficiency stack” of AI — from chips and data centers to software models and enterprise applications — and how improvements in efficiency can reduce costs, emissions, and operational waste. Christina also shares examples of how IBM and its partners are applying AI to urban heat islands, sustainable materials discovery, infrastructure maintenance, and enterprise sustainability management. The episode also examines the tension between AI’s growing energy demand and its efficiency gains, the role of “fit-for-purpose” models, and why Christina believes the social and governance implications of AI deserve even more attention than the environmental ones.