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.
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.
Everyone knows this a line of bullshit that is never going to play out. Even if AI worked like they claimed, and it indisputably does not, it would not lead to energy efficiencies that overcame the massive waste that LLM based AI is to begin with.
