Google’s carbon emissions soar by 48% due to AI - Climate Action
www.climateaction.org

The leap in emissions is largely due to energy-guzzling data centers and supply chain emissions necessary to power artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The report estimated that in 2023, Google’s data centers alone account for up to 10% of global data center electricity consumption. Their data center electricity and water consumption both increased 17% between 2022 and 2023.

Google released 14.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide just last year, 13% higher than the year before.

Climate scientists have shown concerns as Big Tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft continue to invest billons of dollars into AI.

  • Humanius@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    That is assuming that those data centers are necessary. If the data center is doing something that is not really needed then it is in effect wasting power that could have been used for other purposes. (e.g. using surplus power to make steel or aluminium for instance)

    While I do think that AI-tools can be increadibly useful, the current hype surrounding it very much looks like a bubble akin to the DotCom bubble to me. Companies left and right are jumping on the AI bandwagon for the sake of using the buzzword “AI” in their marketing speech.

    I don’t consider that kind of use of datacenters to be necessary.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      using surplus power to make steel

      isn’t steel still primarily made through the coking process? Or is that transitioning to more efficient means, last i heard the barrier was efficient hydrogen generation.

      • Humanius@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        You are correct, but that coking process doesn’t have to be done with fossil fuels. Hydrogen (like you mentioned) is an alternative and you can create hydrogen using water and electricity.

        In the NL we have a pretty polluting steel mill that is currently still coal fired. They are working on a transition plan where they adapt it to be gas fired instead, with the ability down the line to make it hydrogen fired when hydrogen production capacity is up to speed.

        https://www.ad.nl/economie/tata-steel-stopt-met-kolen-binnen-tien-jaar-over-op-waterstof~a801e791/
        (Translated headline: “Tata Steel stops with coal: Transition to hydrogen within ten years”)