Google’s greenhouse gas emissions have surged 48 per cent in the past five years due to the expansion of its data centres 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 14.3mn tonnes of carbon equivalent in 2023, a 48 per cent increase from its 2019 baseline and a 13 per cent 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”.