Google's greenhouse gas emissions increase 48% due to AI development

Google is not the first major tech company to see the rapid development of AI as an obstacle to achieving environmental goals - Photo: REUTERS

According to the annual environmental report released by US technology company Google on July 2, Google's greenhouse gas emissions totaled 14.3 million tons of carbon dioxide ( _CO2 ) throughout 2023, an increase of 48% compared to 2019 and an increase of 13% compared to 2022.

Google blamed higher energy consumption at its data centers and emissions from its supply chain for the drop, and said its push to incorporate AI into its products could make it harder to meet its emissions reduction goals in the future.

Over the past few years, Google has announced that it plans to eliminate these emissions from its operations by 2030.

But Google said in a new report: "As we increasingly integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may become more difficult due to increased energy demand."

According to a recent investigation by Bloomberg News, AI — especially generative AI (which takes user input and spits out new content like text, images, or songs) — is an extremely resource-intensive technology.

As this technology rapidly develops, more and more data centers will be needed to build and operate it, leading to a spike in electricity demand.

A surge in electricity demand fueled by Silicon Valley’s “growth at all costs” approach to AI now threatens to upend countries’ energy transition plans, as well as the clean energy goals of trillion-dollar tech companies.

In some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Ireland and Malaysia, the energy needed to run all the data centers they plan to build at full capacity is already exceeding existing renewable energy supplies, according to a Bloomberg analysis based on the latest available data.

Google is not the first major tech company to see the rapid development of AI as an obstacle to achieving environmental goals.

In May, Microsoft said its carbon emissions had increased 30% since 2020, as the company increasingly invests in AI.

Dr Sasha Luccioni, AI researcher at Hugging Face, said the data showed tech companies were not anticipating the dramatic rise of AI when they set environmental goals.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/luong-khi-thai-nha-kinh-cua-google-tang-48-vi-phat-trien-ai-202407031028049.htm