Integration of AI leads to increased energy consumption, Google's carbon emissions have surged by 48% over the past five years
Google's carbon emissions have increased by nearly half in the past five years, making it more difficult to achieve the goal of eliminating carbon emissions by 2030. Google stated that integrating artificial intelligence into products may increase energy demand, leading to an increase in carbon emissions. With the development of artificial intelligence, tech companies need more data centers to build and operate AI, which may have a disruptive impact on energy transition plans and environmental goals. Microsoft is also facing similar issues, as its carbon emissions have risen with increased investments in artificial intelligence
According to the latest environmental report from Google (GOOGL.US) obtained by Zhitong Finance APP, the company's carbon emissions have increased by nearly half over the past five years due to the integration of artificial intelligence into many of its core products, making it more challenging to achieve its goal of eliminating carbon emissions by 2030.
The report released on Tuesday shows that Google's total greenhouse gas emissions for the full year of 2023 amounted to 14.3 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, up 48% from 2019 and 13% from 2022. Google stated that the increase in energy consumption at its data centers and carbon emissions in its supply chain were the main culprits. The company added that its efforts to incorporate artificial intelligence into its products may make it more difficult to reduce carbon emissions in the future.
Google stated in the report: "As we further integrate artificial intelligence into our products, reducing carbon emissions may be challenging, as the increased computational intensity of artificial intelligence will increase energy demand, and our expected investments in technical infrastructure will lead to increased carbon emissions."
A recent survey by the media shows that artificial intelligence, especially generative artificial intelligence, is extremely resource-intensive. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, more and more data centers are needed to build and operate artificial intelligence. The practice of major tech companies developing artificial intelligence at all costs may lead to a surge in electricity demand, which could disrupt the U.S. energy transition plan and the environmental goals of major tech companies.
It is worth noting that Google is not the first major tech company to see the rapid development of artificial intelligence as an obstacle to achieving environmental goals. In May of this year, Microsoft (MSFT.US) stated that as the company invests more in artificial intelligence, its carbon emissions have increased by 30% since 2020, making it more challenging to achieve its goal of net zero emissions by 2030.
Sasha Luccioni, climate director of the startup Hugging Face Inc., stated that tech companies did not anticipate the massive growth of artificial intelligence when setting environmental goals, "These companies are somewhat unprepared for how much energy is needed to build and enable this technology."