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A warning sign about AI’s real cost, courtesy of Google and Amazon

18 d ago

Google's and Amazon's latest sustainability reports reveal that their pursuit of artificial intelligence is significantly undermining their net-zero carbon pledges. Google's total carbon emissions rose 25% year-over-year, while Amazon's increased by 16%. Both companies indirectly attribute the surge to AI, as their energy consumption has grown substantially with AI adoption. The primary driver is not direct energy purchases, which have been mitigated by renewable power, but "Scope 3" emissions—pollution from goods and services they buy, such as GPUs and data centers. Google's Scope 3 emissions doubled since 2019, adding 2.1 million metric tons last year. Amazon's Scope 3 emissions, mainly from capital goods like data centers and warehouses, spiked even higher; the company added over 1.2 GW of data center capacity in Q4 2025 alone. Until recently, tech firms could offset their carbon footprint by buying renewable energy to power offices and modest data centers. AI has upended that: while renewables plus batteries remain an option, companies are increasingly turning to natural gas. More pernicious are emissions from constructing data centers (steel and cement are heavy polluters) and manufacturing GPUs and memory chips. Semiconductor factories, often in Asia with fossil-fuel-heavy grids, also use potent greenhouse gases. Both Amazon and Google still aim for net-zero, but achieving it will require ramping up renewable purchases, investing in low-carbon steel and cement, and buying millions of tons of carbon removal credits. Their embrace of AI has made these goals far harder to reach.