Google’s Carbon Footprints Rises by 48 Percent due to AI

By Shubhendra Anand , 13 January, 2025

Google is promoting green energy adoption with advancing energy sources for its data centers. The company collaborated with two renewable harnessing companies for geothermal energy support in 2024. Google plans all these for its data centers as it needs a consistent electricity supply. An environmental survey in 2024 shows that Google's emissions rate will be 48 percent higher in 2024. It states artificial intelligence is responsible entirely for the increase in Google's emissions rate.

Big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and others are promoting a clean energy transition in the energy sector. Hence, these companies are adopting renewable sources of energy to power the data centers. In order to set up a constant power supply from renewable sources, the companies are focusing on nuclear and geothermal energy. Data centers will consume a large amount of electricity in 2024. This is due to the high-power computing required by artificial intelligence in data centers. All AI-powered services lead to high electricity consumption and high-power computers. Therefore, artificial intelligence impacts the environment.

Further, it leads to an increasing amount of environmental waste and carbon emissions. Globally, the nations are taking necessary steps to integrate renewables for power generation. This is due to the country's clean energy transition targets that aim to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Google states that it targets to reach net zero emissions by 2030. However, as the company plans to increase the integration of artificial intelligence in its products, reducing carbon emissions is challenging for Google.

According to the environmental report 2024, it is difficult for Google to decrease carbon emissions. Since there is a growing energy demand due to AI computations, it drives the AI functionalities. Additionally, generative AI drives power consumption 33 times more than other software. However, Google claims that more than two-thirds of its energy is received from carbon-free sources.

Google’s carbon emissions rise by 48 percent from 2019 due to AI: