Google escalating climate crisis

Google has just released its 80-page Environmental Report which details how it’s applying tech to mitigate its contributions to climate change issues. In the report, they revealed that, despite having pledged to reach net zero by 2030, their emissions have increased.

Rather than decreasing the amount of damaging carbon emissions it releases into the atmosphere, its emissions have grown by 13% since last year, releasing approximately 14.3 million metric tons of Carbon Dioxide pollution, which is the equivalent to the amount 38 gas-powered plants release, annually. This is 48% higher than it was in 2019 and has increased every year since 2020.

How has Google increased its emissions?

Google data centers–that are used to power and train its AI models–are the biggest contributors to the release of harmful emissions. Their data centers added one million metric tons of pollution to the company’s carbon footprint last year, their energy consumption grew by 17%, and they were responsible for 10% of global data center consumption.

What are they planning to do about it?

Google is trying to make its AI models, hardware, and data centers more energy-efficient, and has claimed it will only use clean energy to power its AI models, by 2030. But nothing concrete has come of these ballpark, vague statements, yet.

They are working on initiatives that use the benefits of AI to help environmental issues, like using data to predict future flooding or making traffic flow more efficiently, to save gas.