Google, Microsoft, and Amazon’s carbon dioxide emissions, collectively, rose by almost a fifth in the last year, mainly due to the construction of new data centers.
According to The Guardian, in the fiscal year ending in March this year, the trio emitted 119 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e), a figure that amounts to roughly one-third of France’s annual emissions. In the previous fiscal year, emissions stood at 101 million MtCO2e, equivalent to the Czech Republic’s 2024 emissions.
The same source says that, in recent years, the climate ambitions of tech companies have been tested and stretched to the limit by the exponential rise in demand for cloud services, especially those related to artificial intelligence (AI) products.
Cecilia Rikap, a professor of Economics at University College London, told The Guardian that the claims by Microsoft, Amazon, and Google that their clouds are ecological and sustainable constitute a marketing strategy.
“Governments should remember these growing carbon footprints when those same companies set out to solve the ecological crisis with AI solutions,” she added.
All three tech giants acknowledge the rise in emissions. Microsoft says its emissions rose 25% in the last year, to 20 MtCO2e, a rise largely due to the expansion of its data-center infrastructure. Google, for its part, points to an 18% increase caused by increases in supply-chain activities that supported the rapid expansion of our business.
Finally, Amazon reported a 16% rise in total emissions, and a 20% rise in supply-chain emissions, which include the construction of data centers. The Guardian expressed surprise at the company describing this increase as “progress” toward its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2040 in its annual report.
It is expected that this year the tech companies will spend several billions of euros building data centers to accommodate the expansion of AI, with all the environmental impacts that ensue, something seen as a retreat from years of effort by the major tech companies to reduce their carbon emissions.
