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 Context 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.
Data hubs
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.
Growing gap
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.
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