Google’s ambitious goal of reducing its climate footprint is facing a significant challenge as the tech giant’s reliance on energy-intensive data centers to power its new artificial intelligence products increases. The company revealed that its greenhouse gas emissions have surged by 48% over the past five years.
The primary culprit behind this rise is the growing demand for AI operations. These operations require millions of specialized processors in dedicated data centers with powerful cooling systems. The energy consumption of AI processors installed in 2023 was estimated to be 7-11 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity annually, which is about 0.04% of global electricity use.
While this figure may seem small, the rapid expansion of AI use suggests that it could become a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions in the future. In fact, within a few years, large AI systems are likely to need as much energy as entire nations.
Moreover, AI’s environmental impact isn’t limited to energy consumption. Generative AI systems also require vast amounts of fresh water to cool their processors and generate electricity. For instance, a giant data center cluster in West Des Moines, Iowa, which serves OpenAI’s most advanced model, GPT-4, used about 6% of the district’s water in July 2022.
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