Google's carbon dioxide emissions are 143 million tons per year, and have increased 48% in four years due to the expansion of AI data centers. Google says it is 'difficult to reduce'

Google released its 2024 Environmental Report on July 2, 2024. The report shows that Google's carbon emissions have increased by 48% compared to 2019.

Google's 2024 Environmental Report

(PDF file) https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/google-2024-environmental-report.pdf

Below is a graph of carbon dioxide emissions trends on page 31 of the report. According to the report, Google's carbon dioxide emissions are increasing by 13% each year from 2019 to 2023, and carbon dioxide emissions in 2023 are expected to reach 143 million tons, a 48% increase from 2019.

Google explains that the increase in carbon dioxide emissions is primarily due to 'increased energy emissions from data centers and our supply chain.' In addition, Google stated, 'As we continue to integrate AI into our products, the load on AI computation increases and we need to further expand our AI infrastructure. This makes it difficult to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions,' indicating that carbon dioxide emissions may continue to increase in the future.

Google is not without measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but is working to improve the power efficiency of its data centers by developing processing chips with improved power efficiency. In fact, in 2024, the company announced the AI processing chip 'Trillium' with 4.7 times the power efficiency of the previous generation ' TPU v5e ', and the power efficiency of Google's data centers will be 1.8 times higher than the industry average. Still, it seems that the increase in carbon dioxide emissions due to the expansion of data centers cannot be countered.

Google announces 6th generation TPU 'Trillium', supporting Google Cloud AI with 4.7x better performance per chip and 67% better energy efficiency than TPU v5e - GIGAZINE

While acknowledging that it is difficult to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from data centers, Google has indicated its intention to use AI to promote climate change measures. Google lists the following initiatives as examples of climate change measures using AI:

- The company will begin using AI to optimize vehicle traffic routes in the second half of 2021, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 2.9 million tons by the end of 2023.
・We developedan AI to forecast floods , making it possible to predict floods up to seven days in advance in 80 countries.
- We are currently working on the ' Green Light ' road signal optimization project, which is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10%.

Google has set a goal of achieving zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. Google is also focusing on energy production, and plans to start operating a geothermal power plant in November 2023.

Google starts operating a geothermal power plant using the world's first technology - GIGAZINE

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