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Google’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased by about 50% over the past five years, due to the energy-hungry data centers needed to run its artificial intelligence, according to its 2024 Environmental Report. The report, released annually by Google, charts the company’s progress towards reaching its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030.
According to the report, Google will emit 14.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2023, 48% more than in 2019 and 13% more than the previous year. “This result is primarily driven by increased data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions,” Google said in the report. “As we further integrate AI into our products, increased energy demands from expected increases in investments in technology infrastructure may make it more difficult to reduce emissions.”
Google’s report focuses on the environmental impact of the explosion of artificial intelligence on the planet. Tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Apple plan to pour billions of dollars into AI, but training AI models requires huge amounts of energy. Using AI features also uses significant amounts of energy. Researchers from AI startup Hugging Face and Carnegie Mellon University predict that by 2023, generating a single image using artificial intelligence will require as much energy as charging a smartphone. Bernstein analysts say AI “could double the growth rate of electricity demand in the United States, with total consumption exceeding current supply over the next two years.” Financial Times Last month, Microsoft also committed to becoming “carbon negative” by the end of the century. Data center construction has caused a nearly 30% increase in greenhouse gas emissions since 2020.
Google reports that its data centers are using much more water for cooling due to expanding AI workloads, which include helping people eat stones in Google Search, applying glue to pizzas to keep cheese from falling off, and generating images for Gemini, the company’s AI-powered chatbot.
In 2023, Google’s data centers will use 17% more water than the previous year. According to the company’s quirky and unconventional measurements, that’s 6.1 billion liters, enough to irrigate about 41 golf courses in the southwestern United States for a year.
“As our business and industry continue to evolve, we expect our total GHG emissions to increase before decreasing toward our absolute emissions reduction goal,” the Google report said, without explaining what would trigger the decrease. “Predicting the future environmental impact of AI is complex and evolving, and historical trends may not fully capture AI’s future trajectory. As we continue to deeply integrate AI across our product portfolio, the distinction between AI and other workloads becomes meaningless.”
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