Google’s greenhouse gases emissions have risen 48 percent in the last five years, due to its expansion of data centres which underpin artificial-intelligence systems. This puts its commitment to achieve “net zero” by the year 2030 into doubt.
Google’s annual environmental report said that the Silicon Valley company will pollute 14.3mn tonnes equivalent carbon in 2023. This is a 48 percent increase over its baseline for 2019 and a 13% rise from last year.
Google acknowledged that the jump was a “challenge to reduce emissions” while it invested in large language models, their applications, and infrastructure. It also admitted that the “future environmental impact of AI is complex and difficult” to predict.
Kate Brandt, chief sustainability officer at the company, said that the company remains committed to the 2030 goal but stressed its “extremely aggressive” nature.
Brandt said, “We still expect our emission levels to continue rising before they drop towards our target.”
She said that Google “works very hard” to reduce its emissions. This includes signing clean energy deals. Brandt said that AI offers “a tremendous opportunity” for climate solutions.
Climate experts are concerned about the impact of these power-intensive systems and tools.
Microsoft acknowledged in May that its emissions have increased by nearly a third, largely due to the construction and expansion of data centres. Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, also said last week that AI could help to accelerate climate solutions.
The energy transmission and generation constraints have already created a challenge to the companies that are trying to develop the new technology. In June, Bernstein analysts said that AI could “double the US electricity demand growth rate and total consumption may exceed current supply within the next two year”.
Google’s Tuesday report stated that its energy-related emissions for 2023 — which are primarily a result of data centre electricity consumption — rose 37 percent year over year and represented about a quarter its total greenhouse gas emission.
Google’s emissions from its supply chain — which represents 75 percent of its total emissions – also increased by 8 percent. Google stated that they will “continue to increase in the near-term” due to the building of infrastructure required to run AI systems.
Google has committed to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions across all its direct and indirect emissions by 2030 and to running on carbon-free electricity every hour of the day in each grid that it operates by this date.
The company’s Tuesday report warned that “termination” in 2023 of certain clean energy projects had reduced the amount of renewables available to it.
Google has been unable to implement more clean energy projects in the US or Asia-Pacific due to the data centre’s electricity consumption.
Google’s data center electricity consumption increased by 17 percent in 2023. This amounted to 7-10% of the global data centre consumption, according to estimates. Google also said that its data centres consumed 17 percent more water than they did the year before.
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