Google’s greenhouse gas emissions have ballooned, according to the company’s latest environmental report, showing how much harder it’ll be for the company to meet its climate goals as it prioritizes AI. Google has a goal of cutting its planet-heating pollution in half by 2030 compared to a 2019 baseline. But its total greenhouse gas emissions have actually grown by 48 percent since 2019. Last year alone, it produced 14.
“As we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging due to increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute, and the emissions associated with the expected increases in our technical infrastructure investment,” the report says. Google’s data center electricity consumption alone grew by 17 percent in 2023, a “trend” it expects to continue in the future, according to the report.