Google said in a report Tuesday that the explosion in demand for artificial intelligence (AI), and therefore computing power, is undermining its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, a problem also facing rivals Amazon and Microsoft.
In 2023, the online search giant saw its greenhouse gas emissions reach 14.3 million tonnes of CO2an increase of 48% compared to 2019, its reference year, according to its annual environmental report.
The cause is an increase in energy consumption in its data centers, the buildings housing the computer servers that form the backbone of the cloud, and therefore of websites, mobile applications, online services, and all the new generative AI tools like ChatGPT.
“As we integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions could prove difficult,” notes the Californian group.
He cites increased energy needs, as AI requires more computing power, as well as emissions from its infrastructure investments, such as building new data centers or upgrading existing ones.
Google has committed to achieving net-zero emissions across its operations by 2030.
Microsoft, the world’s second largest cloud company, has also set itself the goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030.
As for Amazon, the world leader in cloud computing thanks to AWS, its dedicated branch, it does not expect such a result before 2040. Its main activity remains online sales, which requires warehouses and logistics centers all over the world.
The three American giants highlight their efforts to reduce waste and replace the water they consume (to cool servers), as well as their investments in renewable energy and in emerging technologies for capturing and storing carbon dioxide.2 already present in the atmosphere.
But the success of generative AI, popularized by ChatGPT (developed by OpenAI, whose main investor is Microsoft), risks calling into question their progress.
In 2023, Microsoft’s emissions increased by 29% compared to 2020.
This year, the Windows group announced more than $15 billion in investments in AI abroad, from Germany to France to Japan and Indonesia, notably to build new suitable data centers and finance the necessary energy infrastructure.
However, companies assure that advances in AI will help optimize energy consumption and find new solutions to global warming.