Despite Google’s environmental goals, greenhouse gas emissions from 2019 to the present have been increasing due to its focus on artificial intelligence.
A new environmental report from Google shows that the company’s greenhouse gas emissions have significantly increased, posing further challenges to achieving its climate goals.
Development of Google’s Artificial Intelligence Leads to Increased Emissions of Greenhouse Gases
Google aims to halve the emissions it has produced by 2030, but from 2019 to the present, its greenhouse gas emissions have increased by about 48 percent.
Last year, Google produced 14.3 million tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the annual emissions of 38 gas-fired power plants.
According to Google’s new report, this increase is mainly due to the energy consumption of data centers and supply chain emissions. The power consumption of data centers in 2023 added nearly one million tons of carbon footprint to Google’s emissions and has been the largest additional source of emissions for the company.
In its ongoing AI endeavor, Google is redesigning search processes with generative AI and injecting it into other products. The company’s environmental report warns that increased AI activities may also lead to issues such as increased energy demand. Google says it is working to make its AI models, hardware, and data centers more efficient and aims to use carbon-free energy across all its networks by 2030.
