Google’s emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green
Google’s carbon emissions have soared by 51% since 2019 as artificial intelligence hampers the tech company’s efforts to go green.While the corporation has invested in renewable energy and carbon removal technology, it has failed to curb its scope 3 emissions, which are those further down the supply chain, and are in large part influenced by a growth in datacentre capacity required to power artificial intelligence.The company reported a 27% increase in year-on-year electricity consumption as it struggles to decarbonise as quickly as its energy needs increase.Datacentres play a crucial role in training and operating the models that underpin AI models such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4, which powers the ChatGPT chatbot.The International Energy Agency estimates that datacentres’ total electricity consumption could double from 2022 levels to 1,000TWh (terawatt hours) in 2026, approximately Japan’s level of electricity demand.
AI will result in datacentres using 4.5% of global energy generation by 2030, according to calculations by the research firm SemiAnalysis.The report also raises concerns that the rapid evolution of AI may drive “non-linear growth in energy demand”, making future energy needs and emissions trajectories more difficult to predict.Another issue Google highlighted is lack of progress on new forms of low-carbon electricity generation.Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), miniature nuclear plants that are supposed to be quick and easy to build and get on the grid, have been hailed as a way to decarbonise datacentres.
There were hopes that areas with many datacentres could have one or more SMR and that would reduce the huge carbon footprint from the electricity used by these datacentres, which are more in demand due to AI use.The report said these were behind schedule: “A key challenge is the slower-than-needed deployment of carbon-free energy technologies at scale, and getting there by 2030 will be very difficult.While we continue to invest in promising technologies like advanced geothermal and SMRs, their widespread adoption hasn’t yet been achieved because they’re early-stage, relatively costly, and poorly incentivised by current regulatory structures.”It added that scope 3 remained a “challenge”, as Google’s total ambition-based emissions were 11.5m tons of CO₂-equivalent gases, representing an 11% year-over-year increase and a 51% increase compared with the 2019 base year.
This was “primarily driven by increases in supply chain emissions” and scope 3 emissions increased by 22% in 2024.Sign up to Down to EarthThe planet's most important stories.Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialafter newsletter promotionGoogle is racing to buy clean energy to power its systems, and since 2010, the company has signed more than 170 agreements to purchase over 22 gigawatts of clean energy.In 2024, 25 of these came online to add 2.5GW of new clean energy to its operations.
It was also a record year for clean energy deals, with the company signing contracts for 8GW.The company has met one of its environmental targets early: eliminating plastic packaging.Google announced today that packaging for new Google products launched and manufactured in 2024 was 100% plastic-free.Its goal was to achieve this by the end of 2025.In the report, the company also said AI could have a “net positive potential” on climate, because it hoped the emissions reductions enabled by AI applications would be greater than the emissions generated by the AI itself, including its energy consumption from datacentres.
Google is aiming to help individuals, cities and other partners collectively reduce 1GT (gigaton) of their carbon-equivalent emissions annually by 2030 using AI products.These can, for example, help predict energy use and therefore reduce wastage, and map the solar potential of buildings so panels are put in the right place and generate the maximum electricity.
Inside a plan to use AI to amplify doubts about the dangers of pollutants
An industry-backed researcher who has forged a career sowing doubt about the dangers of pollutants is attempting to use artificial intelligence (AI) to amplify his perspective.Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr, a Denver-based risk analyst and former Trump adviser who once reportedly claimed there is no proof that cleaning air saves lives, is developing an AI application to scan academic research for what he sees as the false conflation of correlation with causation.Cox has described the project as an attempt to weed “propaganda” out of epidemiological research and perform “critical thinking at scale” in emails to industry researchers, which were obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests by the Energy and Policy Institute, a non-profit advocacy group, and exclusively reviewed by the Guardian.He has long leveled accusations of flimsiness at research linking exposure to chemical compounds with health dangers, including on behalf of polluting interests such as cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris USA and the American Petroleum Institute – a fossil fuel lobbying group he has even allowed to “copy edit” his findings. (Cox says the edit “amounted to suggesting a small change” and noted that he has also obtained public research funding
Trump’s tax bill seeks to prevent AI regulations. Experts fear a heavy toll on the planet
US Republicans are pushing to pass a major spending bill that includes provisions to prevent states from enacting regulations on artificial intelligence. Such untamed growth in AI will take a heavy toll upon the world’s dangerously overheating climate, experts have warned.About 1bn tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide are set to be emitted in the US just from AI over the next decade if no restraints are placed on the industry’s enormous electricity consumption, according to estimates by researchers at Harvard University and provided to the Guardian.This 10-year timeframe, a period of time in which Republicans want a “pause” of state-level regulations upon AI, will see so much electricity use in data centers for AI purposes that the US will add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than Japan does annually, or three times the yearly total from the UK.The exact amount of emissions will depend on power plant efficiency and how much clean energy will be used in the coming years, but the blocking of regulations will also be a factor, said Gianluca Guidi, visiting scholar at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features
The Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice.The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people’s identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe.Having secured broad cross-party agreement, the department of culture plans to submit a proposal to amend the current law for consultation before the summer recess and then submit the amendment in the autumn.It defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice.The Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, said he hoped the bill before parliament would send an “unequivocal message” that everybody had the right to the way they looked and sounded
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez arrive in Venice for divisive wedding
The billionaire Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and the former TV journalist Lauren Sánchez have arrived in Venice as they prepare to tie the knot in a lavish three-day celebration that has divided the lagoon city.Scores of celebrities and other members of the world’s super-rich will also join the pair in Italy, arriving on superyachts and private jets.Bezos, the world’s fourth-richest person, and Sánchez were seen stepping off a water taxi on Wednesday as they entered the exclusive Aman Venice hotel on the Grand Canal, where many of the celebrities will stay.More than 90 private jets are expected to land in Venice before the celebrations officially begin on Thursday, bringing in guests for an event that some have called the “wedding of the century” and is rumoured to involve everything from pyjama parties to elegant dinners.Among the first guests to arrive were Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, and their children
Group of high-profile authors sue Microsoft over use of their books in AI training
A group of authors has accused Microsoft of using nearly 200,000 pirated books to create an artificial intelligence model, the latest allegation in the long legal fight over copyrighted works between creative professionals and technology companies.Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent and several others alleged that Microsoft used pirated digital versions of their books to teach its Megatron AI to respond to human prompts. Their lawsuit, filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, is one of several high-stakes cases brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright holders against tech companies including Meta Platforms, Anthropic and Microsoft-backed OpenAI over alleged misuse of their material in AI training.The authors requested a court order blocking Microsoft’s infringement and statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work that Microsoft allegedly misused.Generative artificial intelligence products like Megatron produce text, music, images and videos in response to users’ prompts
Meta wins AI copyright lawsuit as US judge rules against authors
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has won the backing of a judge in a copyright lawsuit brought by a group of authors, in the second legal victory for the US artificial intelligence industry this week.The writers, who included Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, had argued that the Facebook owner had breached copyright law by using their books without permission to train its AI system.The ruling comes after a decision on Monday that Anthropic, another major player in the AI field, had not infringed authors’ copyright.The US district judge Vince Chhabria, in San Francisco, said in his decision on the Meta case that the authors had not presented enough evidence that the technology company’s AI would cause “market dilution” by flooding the market with work similar to theirs. As a consequence Meta’s use of their work was judged a “fair use” – a legal doctrine that allows use of copyright protected work without permission – and no copyright liability applied
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