Big Tech’s Climate Promises Under Scrutiny Amid AI-Driven Energy Surge

A recent report from Carbon Market Watch and the NewClimate Institute seriously questioned the validity of climate commitments by the world's leading technology giants such as Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Google. The report identifies that despite ambitious commitments to becoming carbon neutral, increasing energy needs of artificial intelligence (AI) development and expansion of data centres are eroding the plans.

The research reviewed the climate plans of these firms and assessed overall Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon's plans as very poor, and Apple's and Google's as moderate. Meta and Amazon separately received a grade of very poor on reducing emissions, while Google and Microsoft received a grade of poor. Apple was the sole firm that performed comparatively better here.

Big tech players have already made climate pledges. Apple, Google, and Meta pledged to no longer be emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2030. Amazon has that timeline for 2040, but Microsoft took it a step further, committing to being "net negative" by the end of this decade. Those were set, actually, before the recent explosion of AI technologies, which has truly ramped up energy consumption to a level never seen before across the sector.

Power use of such companies has doubled or even tripled over the past three to four years, the report finds. Carbon emissions of the world's top 200 IT companies approached 300 million tonnes of CO₂ in 2023. With down-stream emissions from the use of their products and services added, the figure comes close to five times that amount. On this count, the IT sector would be the fifth-largest polluter in the world, ahead of Brazil.

Between 2017 and 2024, the energy fueling data centres increased by 12 percent annually on average. The figure is expected to double by 2030. As much as effort has gone into utilizing renewable sources of energy by tech companies, most of the electricity consumed by these companies remains not carbon neutral. The research discovers that nearly half of computing power in the data center is provided by subcontractors not reported in emissions reports, the majority of which do not even exist. Moreover, supporting infrastructure and supply chains serving these companies account for a substantial portion of carbon footprint at least one-third of total emissions.

The paper also identifies the absence of regulatory policies in the AI industry, which keeps developing rapidly. Governments will hardly slow down the development of the industry because it has been viewed as economically and strategically valuable. Therefore, there are few signs that companies will alter their business models on their own such that they can lower energy consumption unless policy rules are implemented.

However, the report presents some steps that technology companies can take in order to minimize their footprint on the environment. They include powering both third-party and proprietary data centres with renewable energy, extending the life of electronic products, and even hardware manufacturing making a greater use of recycled materials. The report further emphasizes new ways of quantifying emissions reduction targets since existing standards are regarded as obsolete.

The report contradicts the carbon-neutrality boasts of leading tech giants in response to the fast-growing AI sector. Although numerous companies continue to invest in climate protection, the growth rate in energy consumption is a massive barrier to the effective reduction of greenhouse gases. 

Source:
AFP via Reuters; report by Carbon Market Watch and the NewClimate Institute