AI's effect on Google's Greenhouse Emissions

The tech giant Google has come under fire for their major increase in Greenhouse Gas Emissions since 2019, a fact that is largely due to continued AI integration within the company.

Photo Credits: The exterior of the new Google Bay View campus on May 16, in Mountain View, California. (Aric Crabb / Bay Area News Group / TNS)

How Does AI Increase Carbon Emissions?

A study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, highlighted by MIT Technology Review, found that simply training a single model of AI can use nearly 5 times the emissions of an American car (approximately 626,000 pounds of CO2). Researchers have also found that even more energy, and therefore more carbon emissions, have been caused from AI interference-AI's interactions with internet users through predictions or answering questions. This also does not cover actually creating and testing various models of an AI, highlighted again by MIT Technology Review which discussed research by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, asserting that this step alone emits thousands of pounds of Green House Gasses into the atmosphere.

AI increases these carbon emissions because of the vast amounts of energy needed to power and maintain the data centers that help to run AI programs (as well as much of the internet), as highlighted by Columbia Climate School. Every time AI is used, these data centers process massive amounts of data to help these programs run, thus using lots of electricity and producing lots of heat because of this. This electricity used, as well as the air conditioners required to keep these systems from overheating, emit huge amounts of greenhouse gasses. While this is true for every type of internet usage, with use of the internet being around 3% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions demonstrated by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, even one use of AI requires these centers to produce a massive amount of data, and by extension producing lots of greenhouse gas emissions.

Google's Greenhouse Gas Emissions

So where does google fall into this? Contradictory of their goal to reduce their Greenhouse gas emissions by 50% compared to 2019, Google has actually increased their emissions by 48%, as demonstrated in their 2024 Environmental Report. According to the BBC, one of the biggest reason for this is the increased data center energy consumption caused by these AI programs.

While this presents a challenge to the tech giant, there have been certain breakthroughs in AI creation to integrate AI within the company while reducing emissions. This includes Trillium, a processing unit 67% more efficient than its previous generations. Google is also more focused on reducing these emissions compared to other companies within the tech industry, being about 1.8 times more energy efficient than other companies.

With breakthroughs like Trillium and Google's efforts to make their technology more sustainable, we will hopefully see much more progress in energy efficiency and sustainability when it comes to AI technology.