Tech Giants' Net Zero Goals Under Threat as AI Boom Drives Energy Consumption

Tech giants' net zero goals verging on fantasy: Researchers

The credibility of climate pledges by the world's tech giants to rapidly become carbon neutral is fading fast as they devour more and more energy in the race to develop AI and build data centers, researchers warned Thursday. Apple, Google and Meta said they would stop adding CO into the atmosphere by 2030, while Amazon set that target for 2040. Microsoft promised to be "net negative" -- pulling CO out of the air -- by the end of this decade. But those vows, made before the AI boom transformed the sector, are starting to look like a fantasy even as these companies have doubled down on them, according to independent analysts. "The greenhouse gas emissions targets of tech companies appear to have lost their meaning," Thomas Hay, lead author of a report by think tanks Carbon Market Watch and NewClimate Institute, told AFP. "If energy consumption continues to rise unchecked and without adequate oversight," he added, "these targets will likely be unachievable." The deep-dive analysis found the overall integrity of the climate strategies at Meta, Microsoft and Amazon to be "poor," while Apple's and Microsoft's were deemed "moderate." When it came to the quality of emissions reduction targets, those of Meta and Amazon were judged "very poor," while Google and Microsoft scored a "poor" rating. Only Apple fared better. The expanding carbon footprint of the five top tech behemoths stems mostly from the breakneck expansion of artificial intelligence, which requires huge amounts of energy to develop and run. Electricity consumption -- and the carbon emissions that come with it -- has doubled for some of these companies in the last three or four years, and tripled for others, the report found. The same is true across the sector: operational emissions of the world's top 200 information technology companies was nearly 300 million tonnes of CO in 2023, and nearly five times that if the downstream use products and services is taken into account, according to the UN's International Telecommunications Union. If the sector were a country, it would rank fifth in greenhouse gas emissions ahead of Brazil. Electricity to power data centers increased on average 12% per year from 2017 to 2024, and is projected to double by 2030, according to the IEA. 'Quite unregulated' If all this extra power came from solar and wind, CO emissions would not be rising. But despite ambitious plans to source their energy from renewables, much of it is still not carbon neutral. Studies estimate that half of the computing capacity of tech companies' data centers comes from subcontractors, yet many companies do not account for these emissions, the study points out. The same is true for the entire infrastructure and equipment supply chain, which accounts for at least one-third of tech companies' carbon footprint. "There is a lot of investment in renewable energy, but overall, it has not offset the sector's thirst for electricity," Day said. Given the status of AI as a driver of economic growth, and even as a vector for industrial policy, it is unlikely that governments are going to constrain the sector's expansion, the report noted. "So far the whole AI boom has been altogether quite unregulated," Day said. "There are things these companies can and will do for future proofing, to make sure they're moving in the right direction" in relation to climate goals, he added. "But when it comes to decisions that would essentially constrain the growth of the business model, we don't see any indications that that can happen without regulatory action." The report identifies a number of ways in which the tech sector can curb its carbon footprint, even as it develops AI apace. Ensuring that data centers -- both those belonging to the companies as well as third-party partners -- run on renewable electricity is crucial. Increasing the lifespan of devices and expanding the use of recycled components for hardware production could also make a big difference. Finally, the methods used for calculating emissions reduction targets are out-of-date, and in need of revision, the report said.

Tech giants' net zero goals verging on fantasy: researchers

Paris (AFP) - The credibility of climate pledges by the world's tech giants to rapidly become carbon neutral is fading fast as they devour more and more energy in the race to develop AI and build data centres, researchers warned Thursday. Apple, Google and Meta said they would stop adding CO2 into the atmosphere by 2030, while Amazon set that target for 2040. Microsoft promised to be "net negative" -- pulling CO2 out of the air -- by the end of this decade. But those vows, made before the AI boom transformed the sector, are starting to look like a fantasy even as these companies have doubled down on them, according to independent analysts. "The greenhouse gas emissions targets of tech companies appear to have lost their meaning," Thomas Hay, lead author of a report by think tanks Carbon Market Watch and NewClimate Institute, told AFP. "If energy consumption continues to rise unchecked and without adequate oversight," he added, "these targets will likely be unachievable." The deep-dive analysis found the overall integrity of the climate strategies at Meta, Microsoft and Amazon to be "poor", while Apple's and Microsoft's were deemed "moderate". When it came to the quality of emissions reduction targets, those of Meta and Amazon were judged "very poor", while Google and Microsoft scored a "poor" rating. Only Apple fared better. The expanding carbon footprint of the five top tech behemoths stems mostly from the breakneck expansion of artificial intelligence, which requires huge amounts of energy to develop and run. Electricity consumption -- and the carbon emissions that come with it -- has doubled for some of these companies in the last three or four years, and tripled for others, the report found. The same is true across the sector: operational emissions of the world's top 200 information technology companies was nearly 300 million tonnes of CO2 in 2023, and nearly five times that if the downstream use products and services is taken into account, according to the UN's International Telecommunications Union. If the sector were a country, it would rank fifth in greenhouse gas emissions ahead of Brazil. Electricity to power data centres increased on average 12 percent per year from 2017 to 2024, and is projected to double by 2030, according to the IEA. 'Quite unregulated' If all this extra power came from solar and wind, CO2 emissions would not be rising. But despite ambitious plans to source their energy from renewables, much of it is still not carbon neutral. Studies estimate that half of the computing capacity of tech companies' data centres comes from subcontractors, yet many companies do not account for these emissions, the study points out. The same is true for the entire infrastructure and equipment supply chain, which accounts for at least a third of tech companies' carbon footprint. "There is a lot of investment in renewable energy, but overall, it has not offset the sector's thirst for electricity," Day said. Given the status of AI as a driver of economic growth, and even as a vector for industrial policy, it is unlikely that governments are going to constrain the sector's expansion, the report noted. "So far the whole AI boom has been altogether quite unregulated," Day said. "There are things these companies can and will do for future proofing, to make sure they're moving in the right direction" in relation to climate goals, he added. "But when it comes to decisions that would essentially constrain the growth of the business model, we don't see any indications that that can happen without regulatory action." The report identifies a number of ways in which the tech sector can curb its carbon footprint, even as it develops AI apace. Ensuring that data centres -- both those belonging to the companies as well as third party partners -- run on renewable electricity is crucial. Increasing the lifespan of devices and expanding the use of recycled components for hardware production could also make a big difference. Finally, the methods use for calculating emissions reduction targets are out-of-date, and in need of revision, the report said.

Tech giants' net zero goals verging on fantasy: Researchers

The deep-dive analysis found the overall integrity of the climate strategies at Meta, Microsoft and Amazon to be "poor", while Apple's and Microsoft's were deemed "moderate". When it came to the quality of emissions reduction targets, those of Meta and Amazon were judged "very poor", while Google and Microsoft scored a "poor" rating. Only Apple fared better. The credibility of climate pledges by the world's tech giants to rapidly become carbon neutral is fading fast as they devour more and more energy in the race to develop AI and build data centres, researchers warned Thursday. Apple, Google and Meta said they would stop adding CO2 into the atmosphere by 2030, while Amazon set that target for 2040. Microsoft promised to be "net negative" -- pulling CO2 out of the air -- by the end of this decade. But those vows, made before the AI boom transformed the sector, are starting to look like a fantasy even as these companies have doubled down on them, according to independent analysts. "The greenhouse gas emissions targets of tech companies appear to have lost their meaning," Thomas Hay, lead author of a report by think tanks Carbon Market Watch and NewClimate Institute, told AFP. "If energy consumption continues to rise unchecked and without adequate oversight," he added, "these targets will likely be unachievable." The deep-dive analysis found the overall integrity of the climate strategies at Meta, Microsoft and Amazon to be "poor", while Apple's and Microsoft's were deemed "moderate". When it came to the quality of emissions reduction targets, those of Meta and Amazon were judged "very poor", while Google and Microsoft scored a "poor" rating. Only Apple fared better. The expanding carbon footprint of the five top tech behemoths stems mostly from the breakneck expansion of artificial intelligence, which requires huge amounts of energy to develop and run. Electricity consumption -- and the carbon emissions that come with it -- has doubled for some of these companies in the last three or four years, and tripled for others, the report found. The same is true across the sector: operational emissions of the world's top 200 information technology companies was nearly 300 million tonnes of CO2 in 2023, and nearly five times that if the downstream use products and services is taken into account, according to the UN's International Telecommunications Union. If the sector were a country, it would rank fifth in greenhouse gas emissions ahead of Brazil. Electricity to power data centres increased on average 12 percent per year from 2017 to 2024, and is projected to double by 2030, according to the IEA. 'Quite unregulated' If all this extra power came from solar and wind, CO2 emissions would not be rising. But despite ambitious plans to source their energy from renewables, much of it is still not carbon neutral. Studies estimate that half of the computing capacity of tech companies' data centres comes from subcontractors, yet many companies do not account for these emissions, the study points out. The same is true for the entire infrastructure and equipment supply chain, which accounts for at least a third of tech companies' carbon footprint. "There is a lot of investment in renewable energy, but overall, it has not offset the sector's thirst for electricity," Day said. Given the status of AI as a driver of economic growth, and even as a vector for industrial policy, it is unlikely that governments are going to constrain the sector's expansion, the report noted. "So far the whole AI boom has been altogether quite unregulated," Day said. "There are things these companies can and will do for future proofing, to make sure they're moving in the right direction" in relation to climate goals, he added. "But when it comes to decisions that would essentially constrain the growth of the business model, we don't see any indications that that can happen without regulatory action." The report identifies a number of ways in which the tech sector can curb its carbon footprint, even as it develops AI apace. Ensuring that data centres -- both those belonging to the companies as well as third party partners -- run on renewable electricity is crucial. Increasing the lifespan of devices and expanding the use of recycled components for hardware production could also make a big difference. Finally, the methods use for calculating emissions reduction targets are out-of-date, and in need of revision, the report said.

AI data-centre boom could destroy Big Tech's net-zero plans

WASHINGTON -- The fast-rising energy demands of Big Tech are undermining the ambitious climate pledges that Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft have all made in recent years, according to a report from the nonprofit NewClimate Institute. The research says the tech sector faces a "climate strategy crisis" as its data centres demand ever more electricity and water to power growing fields, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing. "These companies seem to have lost their way with regard to climate strategies," report co-author Thomas Day told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. "The narrative has changed from 'we're fixed on the target' to 'we're really not sure, but we'll get there somehow.'" The picture is further complicated, he said, by ongoing negotiations over how to count and report future emissions. Big Tech has pledged to fight climate change and says it is striving to be sustainable in all aspects of its business. Day though points to Microsoft, which in February described its sustainability goals - made in 2020 - as a "moonshot." It then noted: "We have had to acknowledge that the moon has gotten further away." The company's electricity demand has tripled since 2020, the report found, as it invested in giant warehouses that house the computer systems which let users store photos, stream music, talk with AI chatbots and more. Microsoft declined to comment. The proliferation of data centres has leapt in recent years. North America housed fewer than 1,500 in 2014; by this year, the United States alone had more than 5,400, according to Statista. Their average size and power usage has also jumped. The world's biggest tech firms have nearly all pledged to reach net zero by as soon as 2030, but environmental campaigners are concerned their growing reliance on data centres will bust those ambitions by consuming ever more energy and water. With AI expected to use about 12 per cent of U.S. energy by the end of the decade, according to consultancy firm McKinsey, this could make it increasingly difficult for companies to transition from planet-heating fossil fuels to clean energy. Based on publicly available information, the new report outlines massively increased emissions among the companies, alongside apparently minor changes in sustainability plans. Several of the plans, rather than resulting in net zero, appear to address only half of projected emissions, though NewClimate says hazy accounting makes the gap hard to pin down. While Meta's emissions have more than doubled since 2019, and Amazon's have nearly done so, Amazon's pledge to be net zero by 2040 "omits large portions of its business and remains unsubstantiated," relying on market-based solutions such as carbon credits to do the work. And while many of the companies contract out for a significant proportion of their business, using data centres they don't own, firms such as Meta and Microsoft don't tally these third-party operations in their overall emissions count. Apple and Google did not respond to requests for comment. Meta declined to comment on the report, but a spokesperson said the company reports transparently on emissions and energy consumption, and pointed to a 2024 blog on its energy approach. Amazon said the report "mischaracterizes our data and makes inaccurate assumptions throughout -- its own disclaimer even acknowledges NCI cannot guarantee its factual accuracy. "By contrast, we have a proven, independently audited, seven-year track record of transparently delivering facts that follow global reporting standards." It also called AI a transformative technology that is prompting energy demand to rise across industries and homes. The company listed a host of sustainability initiatives underway at Amazon, be it more efficient delivery routes, lower water use or eliminating plastic from packaging. "We're excited about what's ahead and will continue to share our progress openly," it said in a statement. NewClimate's report also flagged up a much broader concern, given how these companies undergird the wider digital economy, said Nick Dyer-Witheford, a professor of information and media studies at the University of Western Ontario. He pointed to the role that Big Tech firms play worldwide "through digitally-targeted advertising, online shopping and influencer culture" which drives carbon-dioxide emissions. "It is the role of giant digital corporations in sustaining a global regime of ceaseless production and hyper-consumption that needs attention." In the United States, more than half of the 5,400 data centres operating in March ran on fossil fuels, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a U.S. think tank. Data centre-driven energy demand rose by 12 per cent from 2017 to 2024 and is expected to double again by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. Furthermore, within three years almost half of that demand will be for AI data centres, which will then drive how utilities and grid operators have to respond, said Anurag K. Srivastava, a computer science professor at West Virginia University. That is because AI use is expected to fluctuate quickly and at scale, depending on the time of day or even as a particular meme or digital trend rocks the Internet, Srivastava said. "Gas is one (source of energy) that can ramp up and down quickly - you can't do that with nuclear or others," he said. "Solar can be done in the same way, but only if it's located there," he said, noting that large storage batteries could help. That raises the stakes for local communities, Srivastava said, with a gas-powered system that could handle such peaks and troughs coming at a high financial and environmental cost. Whatever the ramp-up in power looks like, it will unfold at unprecedented speed, said Srivastava, adding: "The rate of load change is probably one of the fastest we have seen." ---

Tech giants' net zero goals verging on fantasy: researchers - VnExpress International

Apple, Google and Meta said they would stop adding CO2 into the atmosphere by 2030, while Amazon set that target for 2040. Microsoft promised to be "net negative" - pulling CO2 out of the air -- by the end of this decade. But those vows, made before the AI boom transformed the sector, are starting to look like a fantasy even as these companies have doubled down on them, according to independent analysts. "The greenhouse gas emissions targets of tech companies appear to have lost their meaning," Thomas Hay, lead author of a report by think tanks Carbon Market Watch and NewClimate Institute, told AFP. "If energy consumption continues to rise unchecked and without adequate oversight," he added, "these targets will likely be unachievable." The deep-dive analysis found the overall integrity of the climate strategies at Meta, Microsoft and Amazon to be "poor", while Apple's and Microsoft's were deemed "moderate". When it came to the quality of emissions reduction targets, those of Meta and Amazon were judged "very poor", while Google and Microsoft scored a "poor" rating. Only Apple fared better. The expanding carbon footprint of the five top tech behemoths stems mostly from the breakneck expansion of artificial intelligence, which requires huge amounts of energy to develop and run. Electricity consumption -- and the carbon emissions that come with it -- has doubled for some of these companies in the last three or four years, and tripled for others, the report found. The same is true across the sector: operational emissions of the world's top 200 information technology companies was nearly 300 million tonnes of CO2 in 2023, and nearly five times that if the downstream use products and services is taken into account, according to the UN's International Telecommunications Union. If the sector were a country, it would rank fifth in greenhouse gas emissions ahead of Brazil. Electricity to power data centers increased on average 12% per year from 2017 to 2024, and is projected to double by 2030, according to the IEA. 'Quite unregulated' If all this extra power came from solar and wind, CO2 emissions would not be rising. But despite ambitious plans to source their energy from renewables, much of it is still not carbon neutral. Studies estimate that half of the computing capacity of tech companies' data centers comes from subcontractors, yet many companies do not account for these emissions, the study points out. The same is true for the entire infrastructure and equipment supply chain, which accounts for at least a third of tech companies' carbon footprint. "There is a lot of investment in renewable energy, but overall, it has not offset the sector's thirst for electricity," Day said. Given the status of AI as a driver of economic growth, and even as a vector for industrial policy, it is unlikely that governments are going to constrain the sector's expansion, the report noted. "So far the whole AI boom has been altogether quite unregulated," Day said. "There are things these companies can and will do for future proofing, to make sure they're moving in the right direction" in relation to climate goals, he added. "But when it comes to decisions that would essentially constrain the growth of the business model, we don't see any indications that that can happen without regulatory action." The report identifies a number of ways in which the tech sector can curb its carbon footprint, even as it develops AI apace. Ensuring that data centers -- both those belonging to the companies as well as third party partners -- run on renewable electricity is crucial. Increasing the lifespan of devices and expanding the use of recycled components for hardware production could also make a big difference. Finally, the methods used for calculating emissions reduction targets are out-of-date, and in need of revision, the report said.