Big Tech Data Centers: A Hidden Environmental Crisis

Big Tech is emitting way, way more greenhouse gas emissions than reported

A new Guardian report found big tech's data centers have underreported environmental consequences. Credit: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images Big Tech's data hunger is even worse for the environment than its main players let on, according to a new investigation by the Guardian. The all-out push for AI (and the necessary processing energy it demands) is only exacerbating the demand. The new report analyzed real (or location-based) emissions from Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple's company-owned data centers, finding that their total reported emissions are likely more than 7 times (or 662 percent) higher than current reports. The disparity, according to the Guardian, can be attributed to what experts call "creative accounting" of emissions via renewable energy certificates (Recs). Purchased Recs allow companies to offset some of its electricity consumption to renewable energy-generated electricity (basically "cancelling out" its emissions). But these renewable energy sources are often not actually consumed by the company's perpetrating facilities or even those nearby. Rather than a true estimate of emissions in a specific area, companies are using "market-based" emission figures skewed by Recs. Meta's 2022 location-based carbon dioxide emissions, for example, are 19,000 times higher than its official data center figures. The report also contends that it's "almost impossible" to assess if companies are including third-party emissions in estimates of data centers' environmental impact. Amazon was notably left out of the 600 percent figure, but for good reason -- the company is exponentially more of a polluter than any of the other companies, with Apple, the second-largest emitter, offloading less than half of Amazon's emissions. Amazon, aided by Meta, is also behind an industry push to keep Recs in the emissions accounting process. Google and Microsoft, on the other hand, have or are planning to phase out Recs from their reporting figures. Globally, AI's environmental impact is still being negotiated, especially as AI outpaces typical cloud-based applications in energy consumption. Google recently revealed that its total greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 48 percent between 2019 and 2023, with the majority of the increase pegged to AI investments beginning in 2022. X CEO Elon Musk recently came under fire for the operation of his Tennessee-based xAI data center (powering the generative AI chatbot Grok), which has allegedly been more than dozen gas-powered turbines without environmental permits. Environmental groups denounced the company for violation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s smog standards. Prior to the "AI boom," data centers made up around 1-1.5 percent of global electricity consumption, according to the International Energy Agency, but it is expected to double by 2026.

AI Datacenters More Than 600 Percent Worse for Environment Than Tech Companies Claimed

If these companies were one country, their actual emissions would rank them as the 33rd biggest emitter in the world. What tech companies have claimed so far about the energy costs of building enormous AI models may have been incredibly misleading. Or, depending on your perspective, they lied to you. The Guardian reports that the actual emissions made by data centers owned by AI leaders including Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple, are about 662 percent higher than what they've officially reported. And this may just be the tip of the iceberg: the newspaper's analysis was limited to emissions made between 2020 and 2022, a window that captures the cusp of the AI boom but not the staggering heights that it's reached now. According to the analysis, Amazon was overall the largest emitter by far, but couldn't be included in the above figure because data center-specific emissions weren't available. Still, it's just as guilty as all the rest for obfuscating its environmental impact. All five of the tech companies, The Guardian notes, have at various points claimed -- laughably -- to be carbon neutral. "It's down to creative accounting," a representative from the advocacy group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice told the newspaper. When a tech company reports its emissions, what they're showing you are "market-based" emissions, which are tamped down by purchasing energy certificates, or "Recs," which they then factor into their calculations. These supposedly certify that a company is offsetting its dirty energy consumption with an equivalent amount of renewable energy. You'll want to note that the renewable efforts don't have to be undertaken by the company getting the certificates. Some third party that they pay can handle doing the work of producing the renewables on their behalf -- convenient, right? Any of these tech companies can buy Recs, and in practice little is done to verify how much is actually being "offset." Basically, it's like money laundering except for an energy bill. And as the report shows, even if the offsetting is taking place, the ulterior motive almost certainly isn't to save trees, but to shave off a few zeroes on a carbon balance sheet, all so we can go on pretending this stuff isn't gutting the environment. Instead, a truer reflection of the actual toll would be "location-based emissions." No nonsense here: it's the amount emitted by each data center, straight up. Bear in mind that all the firms don't report specific data center related emissions the same way. But using the location-based emissions that are available, the biggest liar of the bunch appears to be Meta. In 2022, Meta's official emissions from in-house data centers was just 273 metric tons of CO2. But using location-based data, that soars to 3.8 million metric tons -- a 19,000 times increase, in case you were wondering. Microsoft is likely more representative of a big AI company's environmental toll today. Officially, it claimed its data center-related emissions for that year was 280,782 metric tons. The location-based figure? 6.1 million. We'd like to say there's a silver lining, but there probably isn't. By all accounts, AI's energy demand is going to keep growing. "The trend in those emissions is worrying," the report reads. "If these five companies were one country, the sum of their 'location-based' emissions in 2022 would rank them as the 33rd highest-emitting country, behind the Philippines and above Algeria."