The surge in generative artificial intelligence is driving up revenue for major tech companies but also significantly increasing their energy consumption, making them substantial contributors to climate change.
Earlier this month, Google revealed that its carbon emissions have increased by 48% since 2019, primarily due to energy usage by data centers and supply chain emissions. The company reported a 13% year-over-year rise in carbon emissions for 2023, according to its 2024 Environmental Report.
In 2021, Google aimed for net-zero emissions across its operations and value chain by the end of the decade. However, the recent report indicates that starting in 2023, Google will no longer maintain operational carbon neutrality and will instead focus on other carbon solutions and partnerships to achieve its net-zero target.
Similarly, Microsoft set a goal in 2020 to become carbon negative by the end of the decade. However, its 2024 Environmental Sustainability Report revealed that Microsoft’s carbon emissions have increased by almost 31% since 2020, largely due to the expansion of data centers for AI workloads and the production of hardware like semiconductors and servers.
“Our challenges are in part unique to our position as a leading cloud supplier that is expanding its datacenters,” Microsoft stated. “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 such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT account for 2% of global electricity consumption. This demand could eventually impede AI progress. Despite Google’s large carbon footprint, a Goldman Sachs study found that a query on ChatGPT requires nearly 10 times as much electricity as a Google search.
By 2030, data centers could consume up to 9% of electricity in the U.S., more than double the current usage, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. A third of U.S. nuclear power plants are reportedly in discussions with tech companies to become electricity suppliers. In April, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman invested in Exowatt, a startup developing modules to store energy as heat and generate electricity for AI data centers.