Google's emissions surge as AI priorities challenge climate goals

Google's greenhouse gas emissions have surged, as revealed in its latest environmental report, highlighting the challenge of meeting its climate goals amid a focus on AI. The company aims to halve its emissions by 2030 from a 2019 baseline, but emissions have increased by 48% since then. In the past year alone, Google emitted 14.3 million metric tons of CO2, a 13% rise from the previous year, comparable to the annual emissions of 38 gas-fired power plants.

The rise in emissions is primarily due to energy use in data centers and supply chain activities, with data centers, especially those used for AI, being particularly energy-intensive. In 2023, electricity consumption from data centers added nearly a million metric tons of CO2 to Google's carbon footprint, marking the largest source of the company's additional emissions.

As Google integrates AI into its products, the company acknowledges the challenge of reducing emissions due to increased energy demands and related infrastructure investments. Data center electricity consumption alone grew by 17% in 2023, a trend expected to continue. Google's data centers accounted for up to 10% of global data center electricity consumption in 2023.

To address its environmental impact, Google is working to make its AI models, hardware, and data centers more energy-efficient and aims to use carbon-free energy around the clock on all power grids it connects to by 2030.

Globally, data centers use about 1% of the world's electricity, but the AI industry's growth could increase this tenfold by 2026, according to the International Energy Agency. This has raised concerns in the US, where the majority of data centers are located, about the potential for AI to strain power grids and extend the use of coal and gas plants.

Google is not alone in facing these challenges. Microsoft's greenhouse gas emissions were 30% higher in its 2023 fiscal year compared to 2020.