Google's Total Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Due to AI Adoption

One of the Google data centers (photo: Doc. Google)

JAKARTA – Google's latest environmental report shows that the company's greenhouse gas emissions have increased. This is because Google is developing Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Google's total greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 48 percent since 2019. Last year, the company also produced 14.3 million metric tons of pollution, equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by 38 percent of gas-fired power plants.

With the soaring amount of pollution produced by the company, Google is getting further away from its target of achieving net-zero emissions across all operations by 2030. Google is also focused on reducing combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions by half.

In its report, Google explains that this spike in pollution comes from energy use in data centers and supply chain emissions. Moreover, data centers are used to train AI so that the energy used can be much more.

Currently, Google is focusing on developing AI models such as Gemini and incorporating various AI features into its products. With the increasing adoption of AI, Google realizes that this is a challenge in reducing carbon emissions.

"Along with "As we work to further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging due to the increased energy demands of higher AI compute intensity," Google said.

To address this issue, Google will work to reduce energy expenditures across its AI models, data centers, and overall hardware production. In the coming years, Google plans to use carbon-free energy.