Three years ago, Google set out an ambitious plan to tackle climate change: achieving a goal of “net zero emissions” — that is, releasing no more climate-altering gases into the air than it removes — by 2030.
But a company report released Tuesday showed it is far from meeting that goal.
Instead of declining, its emissions grew by 13 percent in 2023 compared to the previous year. Compared to the base year of 2019, emissions soared by 48 percent.
Google cited artificial intelligence and the demands it places on data centers, which require huge amounts of electricity, for last year's growth.
Producing electricity by burning coal or natural gas emits greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, which warm the planet and cause more extreme weather events.
The company has made one of the most significant climate commitments in the industry and has been considered a leader.
Lisa Sachs, director of Columbia's Center for Sustainable Investment, said Google should do more to partner with cleaner companies and invest in the power grid.
“The reality is that we are far behind what we could be doing now with the technology we have, with the resources we have, in terms of moving forward in the transition,” he said.
Google's chief sustainability officer, Kate Brandt, told The Associated Press: “Achieving this net-zero emissions goal by 2030 is an extremely ambitious goal.
“We know this won’t be easy and our approach will need to continue to evolve,” Brandt added, “and it will require us to navigate a lot of uncertainty, including this uncertainty around the future environmental impacts of AI.”
AI electricity demand
Some experts say the rapid expansion of data centers needed to power AI threatens the entire transition to clean electricity, an important aspect of addressing climate change. That’s because a new data center can delay the closure of a fossil-fuel-burning power plant or spur the construction of a new one. Data centers not only consume a lot of energy, but also require high-voltage transmission lines and significant amounts of water to keep them cool. They’re also noisy.
They are often built where electricity is cheapest, not where renewables, such as wind and solar, are a key source of energy.
Global demand for electricity generated by data centers and artificial intelligence could double by 2026, according to the International Energy Agency.
Other major tech companies’ sustainability plans are also under threat from data center proliferation, which caused Microsoft’s emissions to rise 29 percent above its 2020 baseline, the company said in an environmental sustainability report released in May.
Tech companies argue that while AI contributes to climate change, it also helps address it.
In Google's case, that could mean using data to predict future floods or making traffic flow more efficient to save gas.
Amanda Smith, a senior scientist at Project Drawdown, a climate nonprofit, said those using AI — both large companies and individuals simply creating memes — should do so responsibly, meaning using energy only when it benefits society.
“It’s up to us as humans to look at what we do with it and ask ourselves why we do it,” Smith added. “When it pays off, we can make sure those demands are met with clean energy sources.”
Google’s emissions rose last year in part because the company used more energy — 25,910 more gigawatt hours, up from the year before and more than double the hours of energy it used just four years earlier. A gigawatt hour is roughly the amount of energy a power plant supplying several hundred thousand homes produces in one hour.
On the plus side, as Google's consumption grows, so does its use of renewable energy.
The company said in 2020 that it would meet its massive electricity needs using only clean energy every hour of every day by 2030 worldwide. Last year, Google said it saw an average of 64 percent carbon-free energy for its data centers and offices worldwide. The company said its data centers are on average 1.8 times more energy efficient than others in the industry.
Sachs praised Google for its ambition and honesty, but said she hopes “Google will join us in a more rigorous conversation about how to accelerate” clean energy amid the climate crisis, “so that it doesn't get much worse before it starts to get much better.”
