A new analysis of the emissions from in-house or company owned data centers hints that big tech companies are not being honest.
The data suggests that companies including Meta, Google, Microsoft and Apple are actually emitting 7.623 times more greenhouse gases than they are admitting to.
Big tech is no stranger to accusations of greenwashing, but as the demands for AI grows, so will the energy demands from the data centers.
“Creative Accounting”
The data was gathered from 2020 to 2022 by British newspaper The Guardian. It suggests that the big four are getting around the truth by using a metric that makes them appear much greener than they actually are.
Data centers receive renewable energy certificates, or Recs; and they use these as a measure of their emissions. The certificates show that the company is buying renewable energy-generated electricity and what proportion of its electricity usage this is.
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However, says The Guardian: “the renewable energy in question doesn’t need to be consumed by a company’s facilities. Rather, the site of production can be anywhere from one town over to an ocean away.”
If the companies had to use a location-based emissions metric and they were treated as one country, their combined emissions for 2022 would place them as the 33rd highest-emitting country in the world. This is despite the fact that all – bar Google – have claimed carbon neutrality.
Google has, however, phased out its use of Recs and Microsoft is aiming to do so by 2030.
Huge Omission on Emissions
The report doesn’t even include Amazon, which the newspaper says “is the largest emitter of the big five tech companies by a mile” because “its business model makes it difficult to isolate data center-specific emissions figures for the company.”
However, there is rising disappointment among Amazon employees that its company isn’t doing more. One employee and member of the advocacy group, the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, told the newspaper: “Amazon – despite all the PR and propaganda that you’re seeing about their solar farms, about their electric vans – is expanding its fossil fuel use, whether it’s in data centers or whether it’s in diesel trucks.”
The Impact of AI
With the increased demand for AI, there is mounting concern that energy consumption at data centers will soar. A Goldman Sachs report stated that a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search. It adds that data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030.
There is now an urgency to tackle exactly how carbon emissions are reported – including whether data center capacity rented from third-party operators is included. There is also concern that countries simply won’t be able to meet the renewable energy needs that big tech is sapping.
Experts in carbon management are urging governments to be less permissive towards big tech and hold them accountable as the demand for AI accelerates. Determining metrics that leave little room for greenwashing would be a huge step towards this.
