Google blames AI for increasing emissions rather than moving towards net zero

Even though Google said they would be “net zero” by 2030, their emissions have gone up by 48% since 2019, mostly because AI and data centres use a lot of energy. This makes their climate goals very hard to reach.

Google made a big promise three years ago to fight climate change by going “net zero,” which means that by 2030, it would not put any more greenhouse gases into the air than it takes out. But the company’s report on Tuesday showed that it is still a long way from reaching that goal. Instead of going down, its emissions went up by 13% from 2022 to 2023. Since 2019, the baseline year, emissions have increased by 48 percent.

Google said that the growth last year was due to artificial intelligence and the need for data centres, which use a lot of electricity. Burning coal or natural gas to make electricity releases greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the air. These gases warm the earth and make the weather more extreme. Because it made one of the biggest climate promises in its field, the company has gained recognition as a leader.

Lisa Sachs, who runs the Columbia Centre on Sustainable Investment, said that Google should do more to work with greener businesses and put money into the power grid. With the technology and resources we have now, she said, “The truth is that we are far behind what we could already be doing to speed up the transition.”

According to The Associated Press, Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt said, “This net zero goal by 2030 is a very, very ambitious goal.”

Brandt said, “We know this isn’t going to be easy, and that our approach will need to keep changing. It will also require us to deal with a lot of uncertainty, including this uncertainty about AI’s future effects on the environment.”

Some experts say that the rapidly growing data centres that AI needs could make it impossible to switch to clean electricity, which is a key part of fighting climate change. This is because a new data centre has the potential to either prolong the operation of a fossil fuel-burning power plant or prompt the construction of a new one. Data centres consume a significant amount of energy and require high-voltage transmission lines and ample water to maintain their cooling.

People often build solar and wind farms in areas with cheap electricity, not where these energy sources are crucial. The International Energy Agency says that by 2026, the need for electricity in data centres and AI could double.

A lot of data centres are also making it challenging for other big tech companies to stick to their plans for sustainability. Microsoft revealed in a May report that these changes led to a 29% increase in its emissions compared to its 2020 baseline.

Silicon Valley says that even though AI is making climate change worse, it is also helping to fix it. For Google, this could mean using data to figure out when it will flood or how to improve traffic flow to save gas.

Amanda Smith on the Responsible Use of AI and Energy Efficiency

Amanda Smith, a senior scientist at the climate nonprofit Project Drawdown, said that people and businesses that use AI, even if they’re just making memes, should be responsible and only use the energy when it’s beneficial for society.

According to Smith, humanity needs to be aware of what it does and ask itself why it does what it does. “When it’s worth it, we can ensure that clean sources of power meet those needs.” Last year, Google used 25,910 gigawatt hours more energy than it did the year before. That is more than twice as much energy as the company used in 2014. A gigawatt hour is about the same amount of power that a plant that serves a few hundred thousand homes gives off in an hour.

In 2020, the company said that by 2030, it would get all of its electricity from clean sources, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Google said that the energy it used in its data centres and offices around the world was 64% carbon-free on average last year. The company said that its data centres use about 1.8 times less energy than other data centres in the same field.

According to Sachs, Google is honest and has big goals. However, she hopes that Google will join us in a more serious discussion about how to speed up clean energy in the face of the climate crisis, to keep things from getting worse before they get better.

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Ellis Stevenson

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