Lisbon, June 28, 2026 (Lusa) - The head of technology consultancy at KPMG Portugal said, in an interview with Lusa, that climate risk has moved from the sustainability agenda onto the CEO’s agenda, becoming a top management priority.
“Climate risk has moved from the sustainability agenda onto the CEO’s agenda. And that shift – from a side issue to a top management priority – is, in itself, the news,” Rui Gonçalves, partner and head of technology consulting at KPMG Portugal, told Lusa.
“The problem is that awareness is not the same as action, and Portugal has a history of taking action well after a disaster and barely before it”, but “this time, we have the tools to reverse that order; we just need to use them”, he continues, referring to the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
KPMG, together with its partners, recently presented several solutions operating on a global scale, “including a case involving a proprietary satellite constellation that feeds AI models, providing actionable meteorological intelligence to energy, transport and infrastructure operators”, he explained.
This work is carried out on three very specific fronts: Firstly, “the assessment, where we help public and private entities to understand their actual exposure – which infrastructure is critical, how vulnerable it is, what happens if it fails – and to design adaptation plans based on data, not intuition”. Secondly, “the link to operations, turning the alert into action”.
Thirdly, “and perhaps the most underestimated aspect, the figures – almost all organisations today recognise the climate threat, but few manage to translate it into a concrete figure. And it is on this last point that everything hinges: there is a gulf between the awareness that there is a problem and the decision to spend money to solve it, and whoever manages to bridge that gulf with credible figures gains years of head start. “That’s where a trusted advisor makes the difference,” emphasises Rui Gonçalves.
“We are working to ensure that the solutions demonstrated in May are made available for testing and real-world demonstration at KPMG’s Future Lab in Portugal – a space dedicated to emerging technologies, from AI to digital twins, where companies and public bodies can validate concepts before rolling them out in the field,” he asserts.
As for AI agents, he points out that they have enormous potential for climate resilience.
“An agent can monitor an electricity grid around the clock, cross-reference anomalies with weather data, trigger asset protection and coordinate the response – in minutes, at any time, without waiting for someone to wake up to validate it,” he explains.
However, “autonomy comes at a price, and that price is not only technical but also one of trust – what we at KPMG call Trusted AI”, which involves saying that an AI agent acts in accordance with the rules. “In critical infrastructure – energy, water, transport – managing this tension is of the utmost importance.”
The “right answer is not to halt adoption”, but “to build, at the same pace, the safeguards: supervision, auditing, and clear limits that transform autonomy into responsible autonomy”, he points out.
Using AI to predict and curb climate change “requires colossal computing power” which is housed in data centres with “an ever-growing appetite for energy”, he has acknowledged.
The International Energy Agency estimates that, by 2026, the world’s data centres will consume more than 1,000 terawatt-hours – “as much as the whole of Japan” – and “the United Nations goes even further: by 2030, AI-dedicated centres alone could reach 945 TWh, almost triple the combined consumption of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria – countries home to more than 650 million people”.
To put this into perspective, “a single generative AI task uses, on average, 10 times more energy than a standard internet search”, he says.
“Finding a way out of this impasse requires three things at once: powering data centres with clean energy, designing more efficient models for what really matters, and – the most difficult part – having the discipline to distinguish between AI uses that are worth the cost and those that are not,” he points out.
“And here in Portugal we hold an ace up our sleeve that few others have: sun, wind, water – a growing renewable capacity that already puts the country at the forefront of Europe. In other words, if there’s any place where the equation between AI and the climate can be balanced in the right direction, it’s here,” he concludes.
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