Google Emissions Jump Nearly 50% Over Five Years As AI Use Surges (ft.com) 29
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Google's greenhouse gas emissions have surged 48 percent in the past five years due to the expansion of its data centers that underpin artificial intelligence systems, leaving its commitment to get to "net zero" by 2030 in doubt. The Silicon Valley company's pollution amounted to 14.3 million tons of carbon equivalent in 2023, a 48 percent increase from its 2019 baseline and a 13 percent rise since last year, Google said in its annual environmental report on Tuesday. Google said the jump highlighted "the challenge of reducing emissions" at the same time as it invests in the build-out of large language models and their associated applications and infrastructure, admitting that "the future environmental impact of AI" was "complex and difficult to predict."
Chief sustainability officer Kate Brandt said the company remained committed to the 2030 target but stressed the "extremely ambitious" nature of the goal. "We do still expect our emissions to continue to rise before dropping towards our goal," said Brandt. She added that Google was "working very hard" on reducing its emissions, including by signing deals for clean energy. There was also a "tremendous opportunity for climate solutions that are enabled by AI," said Brandt. [...] In Tuesday's report, Google said its 2023 energy-related emissions -- which come primarily from data center electricity consumption -- rose 37 percent year on year, and overall represented a quarter of its total greenhouse gas emissions. Google's supply chain emissions -- its largest chunk, representing 75 percent of its total emissions -- also rose 8 percent. Google said they would "continue to rise in the near term" as a result in part of the build-out of the infrastructure needed to run AI systems.
Google has pledged to achieve net zero across its direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and to run on carbon-free energy during every hour of every day within each grid it operates by the same date. However, the company warned in Tuesday's report that the "termination" of some clean energy projects during 2023 had pushed down the amount of renewables it had access to. Meanwhile, the company's data centre electricity consumption had "outpaced" Google's ability to bring more clean power projects online in the US and Asia-Pacific regions. Google's data centre electricity consumption increased 17 percent in 2023, and amounted to approximately 7-10 percent of global data center electricity consumption, the company estimated.Its data centers also consumed 17 percent more water in 2023 than during the previous year, Google said.
Chief sustainability officer Kate Brandt said the company remained committed to the 2030 target but stressed the "extremely ambitious" nature of the goal. "We do still expect our emissions to continue to rise before dropping towards our goal," said Brandt. She added that Google was "working very hard" on reducing its emissions, including by signing deals for clean energy. There was also a "tremendous opportunity for climate solutions that are enabled by AI," said Brandt. [...] In Tuesday's report, Google said its 2023 energy-related emissions -- which come primarily from data center electricity consumption -- rose 37 percent year on year, and overall represented a quarter of its total greenhouse gas emissions. Google's supply chain emissions -- its largest chunk, representing 75 percent of its total emissions -- also rose 8 percent. Google said they would "continue to rise in the near term" as a result in part of the build-out of the infrastructure needed to run AI systems.
Google has pledged to achieve net zero across its direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and to run on carbon-free energy during every hour of every day within each grid it operates by the same date. However, the company warned in Tuesday's report that the "termination" of some clean energy projects during 2023 had pushed down the amount of renewables it had access to. Meanwhile, the company's data centre electricity consumption had "outpaced" Google's ability to bring more clean power projects online in the US and Asia-Pacific regions. Google's data centre electricity consumption increased 17 percent in 2023, and amounted to approximately 7-10 percent of global data center electricity consumption, the company estimated.Its data centers also consumed 17 percent more water in 2023 than during the previous year, Google said.
I wonder where they'll get all of that energy? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I'll bet the solution'll involve some exotic form of battery, perhaps even with a copper-top?
They're going to take all the redheaded people of this world and put them into a Matrix-style bioreactor?
Re: (Score:2)
Google's report goes into the potential uses for AI to reduce emissions, such as smart routing of delivery vehicles and such; they believe such uses of AI can lower global emissions by 10%.
Also, I love the insinuation that AI raised Google's emissions 50%. AI was barely a blip on Google's energy consumption until last year, and it's still small (just growing fast) . Google energy growth five years ago had not a damned thing to do with AI. Their growth in the past year was 13%, well in line with previous y
Re: I wonder where they'll get all of that energy? (Score:2)
I think they overshot their assumptions because it takes a lot of mental gymnastics even for an actual person to come up with shit like this:
https://www.bbc.com/news/techn... [bbc.com]
Now imagine how much computational power it takes for a computer to do similar mental gymnastics.
But heating my house.... (Score:2, Flamebait)
with natural gas is the problem.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Just your cook stove and bitcoin wallet will destroy civilization.
Re: (Score:2)
THE problem? There's no THE problem, unless you count greed. But even greed is based in part on fear, so it's at least two problems.
If you think that there's one single solution to any complex problem, you are part of the problem, and actually contributing to making it more complex.
Easy solution (Score:2)
Train the AI to tell everyone that burning coal is green, clean, and renewable and tell people to refer to the most advanced AI in the world to answer the question.
So confusing... (Score:1)
So I'll be 'net zero' in 2030 because all of the electricity on the grid will be green. If I still have to use non-green electricity, well then, it isn't my fault.
And what is 'net zero' anyway? I keep seeing articles about people wanting their homes, etc etc etc to be 'net zero' in 6 years. Doesn't that mean that you take out as much CO2 as you put in? If you are using plastics, pharmaceuticals, synthetic fibers, concrete and modern agriculture, aren't you producing a good amount of CO2? Where is th
Re: So confusing... (Score:2)
Net zero is far from the only accounting trick. What these companies are often doing is buying the rights to say their power comes from solar and wind on average, i.e. that the overall installed capacity annually that they pay for exceeds their overall annual use. The good ones at least pay for a rooftop solar array or something and play the shell game that is net metering, which nomially adds a little capacity. The bad ones basically purchase the rights to say their energy was green from existing resources
Google Emissions (Score:2)
AI makes Google worse (Score:3, Insightful)
And costs them billions. This is their "moonshot" but it's more like a splash into the toilet bowl.
What's all their AI actually doing? (Score:2)
I wonder what people are actually using all that AI for? Sure, it draws fun pictures, but how much is being used for real work?
I bet most is used for spam and click-bait, generating it and mining user patterns (snoopware).
"Big AI" wouldn't tell us that out of embarrassment. The dirty secret is that spam and porn will probably greenhouse the next generation into WW3. The "solution" to the Fermi Paradox? Spam & Porn did them in.
Re: (Score:1)
No, that's the Presidential candidates.
Re: (Score:2)
What the AI does is transmute fossil fuels (among other things) into investment dollars.
Thankfully, this only works until all the investment dollars have been blown.
Unfortunately, the world is suffocating with dumb rich people. So it's taking a while to run out.
"Eat ze bugs" so Google can make more profits... (Score:1)
I wonder how many people will tell us to go turn in our cars, live in smaller homes or apartments, "eat ze bugs", saying it is our part for climate change... when businesses that actually do the emissions start pouring out more.
Want to reduce climate change, the title has who needs to start making themselves climate neutral.
I truly don't care anymore (Score:1)
Every minute of every hour of every day we are bombarded with eco, net-zero, emission, etc news. It got to the point where it's all simply become too much for me give a monkeys about anymore.
So be it. Price of progress. (Score:3)
If increasing emissions is inherently the price of progress (be it good progress or bad progress such as AI) then so be it. We shouldn't be self-limiting and putting the breaks on development of potentially beneficial technologies simply because our emissions may go up. It's backwards. Rather than restricting our output, we should be working on parallel methods of mitigating side effects of technological progress without limiting our potential in the first place.
This is not AI's fault (Score:3)
Googles electrical use is a steady curve going up at an alarming rate. The curve did NOT change when AI was introduced. Anymore than it changed when we moved to object oriented programming.
Basically, this is a result of more computing by Google, not Googles move to AI.
AI is just the newest hot thing in computing, not a particularly more intense use of computing. If we were to get fed up with AI and moved to some new paradigm (Quantum computing, supply/demand computing, Chaos jump computing, or some other weird thing) then the curve would remain unchanged.
In other words, it's humanity doing humanity, not AI doing anything.
Block Google AI (Score:2)
If you're like me and immediately skip the stupid AI results anyway, adding:
google.com##.GcKpu
To your custom filters in ublock makes them disappear completely.
Corporate promises are great (Score:2)
Until something gets in the way. You know, like competing with other companies.
Carbon neutral was great for them, when they had really nothing new to offer. Next they'll split up their commitment to "carbon neutral for all non-AI operations by 2030" and "everything else" by 2130.