Google has reported an increase in greenhouse gas emissions in their latest Environmental Report. This is mainly due to their data centres that have expanded as a way to support AI developments, that use about 7-10% of the electricity used by all data centres around the world.
鈥淚n 2023, Google had offices and data centres on six continents, in over 200 cities, across nearly 60 countries,鈥� says Google in the report. This requires a lot of energy and explains why heir emissions have gone up by 48% since 2019.
听
How Much Energy Consumption Did Google Report For 2023?
听
Last year alone, emissions grew by 13% from the previous year, totalling 14.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. 鈥淚n 2023, our total data centre electricity consumption grew 17%, despite maintaining a 100% global renewable energy match. As Google鈥檚 infrastructure continues to power the digital transition, providing numerous economic benefits across the globe, we expect this trend to continue in the future.
鈥淏ut we see our growing infrastructure as an opportunity to drive the innovations and investments needed to power a low-carbon economy. Overall, our total GHG emissions increased by 13%鈥攈ighlighting the challenge of reducing emissions while compute intensity increases and we grow our technical infrastructure investment to support this AI transition,鈥� they report.
听
Water Usage And Renewable Energy Initiatives
听
Servers in the data centres require cooling systems and as they expand, more servers are being powered. As a result, Google鈥檚 water consumption went up from being at 6% in 2022, to 18% being last year. They have confirmed that they will continue to use the water cooling method.
Microsoft鈥檚 recently concluded underwater data centre could serve as a solution for Google as well, but this will depend on how the company decides to go about sustainable water consumption.
听
More from News
- From Workouts To Managing Jetlag: The British Tech Scale-Up That Just Hit One Million Users Globally Appoints New CEO
- Hackers Tricked Instagram鈥檚 AI To Leak Your Log In Details 鈥� How Can Users Stay Protected?
- New Research Reveals The UK鈥檚 Top 10 鈥淔uture-Ready鈥� Cities
- New Research Shows How Elections Are Impacting The Job Market 鈥� Here鈥檚 How
- Is London Becoming The World鈥檚 Next AI Capital?
- Google鈥檚 AI Can鈥檛 Even Spell 鈥淕oogle鈥� 鈥� So Why Is It Replacing Search?
- Will AI Labels Actually Save YouTube From AI Slop?
- The Rise Of 鈥淣ew Brand鈥� Cybercrime Groups And The Business Of Ransomware
Google鈥檚 Solutions And Initiatives For Sustainability
听
In the report, Google has detailed a number of plans and strategies to ensure a sustainable energy consumption rate is maintained in the future.
Google is on a mission to power all its operations with completely clean energy by 2030, and they鈥檙e well on their way! They鈥檝e already managed to keep their energy usage 100% renewable for 7 years straight, making this goal a realistic one. They鈥檝e already signed contracts for approximately 4 GW of clean energy capacity as of last year.
When it comes to tech, Google intends on reducing energy consumption through technological innovations. Their data centres will help in this regard, as they are designed to minimise the amount of energy used. With the planned advancements in AI, Google plans to reduce the energy needed to train AI models, which in turn makes these processes up to a hundred times more energy-efficient.
Google added that their water risk framework launched last year will help with water consumption, as it allows them to make sure water use is still mindful of local ecosystems and communities they take water from.
鈥淲e have a bold goal to reach net-zero emissions across all of our operations and value chain by 2030, supported by a goal to run on 24/7 CFE on every grid where we operate. In addition, we鈥檙e working to advance water stewardship, build a circular economy, and restore and enhance nature and biodiversity,鈥� Google announced in a press release.
