The surge in generative artificial intelligence (AI) is driving revenue growth for major tech companies, but the high energy demand is significantly contributing to climate change.
Earlier this month, Google reported a 48% increase in carbon emissions since 2019, primarily due to energy consumption by data centers and supply chain emissions. According to its 2024 Environmental Report, Google’s carbon emissions rose by 13% year-over-year in 2023.
In 2021, Google aimed for net-zero emissions across its operations and value chain by the end of the decade. However, the company stated in the report that from 2023 onward, it would no longer maintain operational carbon neutrality and would instead focus on other carbon solutions and partnerships to achieve the net-zero goal.
Similarly, Microsoft set a goal in 2020 to be “carbon negative” by the end of the decade. However, its 2024 Environmental Sustainability Report revealed that Microsoft’s carbon emissions had increased by almost 31% since 2020, primarily due to the expansion of data centers for AI workloads and hardware such as semiconductors and servers.
“Our challenges are partly unique to our position as a leading cloud supplier expanding its datacenters,” Microsoft said in a statement. “But even more, we reflect the challenges the world must overcome to develop and use greener concrete, steel, fuels, and chips.”
In April, Ami Badani, Chief Marketing Officer of British chip designer Arm, noted that data centers powering AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT account for 2% of global electricity consumption, potentially slowing AI advancement. Despite Google’s significant carbon footprint, a Goldman Sachs study found a ChatGPT query requires nearly 10 times more electricity than a Google search.
Projections by the Electric Power Research Institute suggest that by 2030, data centers could consume up to 9% of electricity in the U.S., more than double the current usage. A third of U.S. nuclear power plants are reportedly in talks with tech companies to provide electricity. In April, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was among investors in Exowatt, a startup developing modules to store energy as heat and generate electricity for AI data centers.