Google's carbon emissions increased by 48% in five years due to artificial intelligence

 Google warned in a report published on Tuesday that the significant increase in demand for artificial intelligence, and thus computing power, undermines its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, a problem that its competitors Amazon and Microsoft also face.

In 2023, the giant group's emissions of carbon dioxide, one of the most prominent types of greenhouse gas, will reach 14.3 million tons, an increase of 48% compared to the reference year 2019, according to its annual environmental report.

This is due to increased energy consumption in its data centers, the buildings that house the computer servers that are the backbone of cloud computing services, and therefore of websites, mobile applications, online services, and all the new AI-generating tools like GBT chat.

"As we integrate artificial intelligence into our products, it may be difficult to reduce emissions," the California-based group said.

It cited increased energy needs as artificial intelligence requires more computing power, as well as emissions from its investments in infrastructure, building new data centers or upgrading existing ones.

Google has pledged to achieve net-zero emissions across its operations by 2030.

Microsoft, the world's second largest cloud computing company, has also pledged to achieve a negative carbon footprint by 2030.

As for Amazon, the world leader in cloud computing thanks to its dedicated subsidiary AWS, it does not expect to achieve this result before 2040. Its main activity remains online retailing, which requires warehouses and logistics centers around the world.

The three American giants highlight their efforts to reduce waste and replace the water they consume (to cool servers), as well as their investments in renewable energy and new technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

But the success of generative AI, especially since the emergence of the GBT chat app (developed by OwenAI, in which Microsoft is a major investor), threatens to undermine its efforts.

In 2023, Microsoft's emissions increase by 29% compared to 2020.

However, the companies claim that advances in artificial intelligence will enable improved energy consumption and help find new solutions to climate warming.