Application of Artificial Intelligence for Predicting CO2 Emission Using Weighted Multi-Task Learning

Abstract

Carbon emissions significantly contribute to global warming, amplifying the occurrence of extreme weather events and negatively impacting the overall environmental transformation. In line with the global commitment to combat climate change through the Paris Agreement (COP21), the European Union (EU) has formulated strategies aimed at achieving climate neutrality by 2050. To achieve this goal, EU member states focus on developing long-term national strategies (NLTSs) and implementing local plans to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in alignment with EU objectives. This study focuses on the case of Sweden and aims to introduce a comprehensive data-driven framework that predicts CO2 emissions by using a diverse range of input features. Considering the scarcity of data points, we present a refined variation of multi-task learning (MTL) called weighted multi-task learning (WMTL). The findings demonstrate the superior performance of the WMTL model in terms of accuracy, robustness, and computation cost of training compared to both the basic model and MTL model. The WMTL model achieved an average mean squared error (MSE) of 0.12 across folds, thus outperforming the MTL model’s 0.15 MSE and the basic model’s 0.21 MSE. Furthermore, the computational cost of training the new model is only 20% of the cost required by the other two models. The findings from the interpretation of the WMTL model indicate that it is a promising tool for developing data-driven decision-support tools to identify strategic actions with substantial impacts on the mitigation of CO2 emissions.