AFP: Tech companies’ carbon neutrality pledges are losing credibility

Pledges by tech giants to quickly become carbon-neutral are losing credibility. Independent researchers say that, as companies race to develop artificial intelligence (AI) and build data centers, they are consuming ever more energy, which does not always come from renewable sources. The AFP news agency reports.

Apple, Google and Meta Platforms have said they will stop emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere by 2030. Amazon has set this target for 2040. Microsoft has pledged to become carbon negative by the end of this decade, meaning it will remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But all these pledges were made before the AI boom transformed the industry, and independent analysts say they are now starting to look like fantasies, even as companies continue to promote them loudly.

"The greenhouse gas emissions targets of tech companies appear to have lost their meaning," Thomas Hay, lead author of an analysis prepared by Carbon Market Watch and the NewClimate Institute, told AFP.

"If energy consumption continues to grow unchecked and without adequate oversight, these targets will probably be unattainable," he added.

The detailed analysis rated the overall credibility of the climate strategies of Meta, Amazon and Microsoft as weak, while Apple and Microsoft were rated average. In terms of the quality of their emissions reduction targets, Amazon and Meta fared even worse, with their plans rated very poor, while Google and Microsoft were rated poor. Apple was the only company to perform better in this respect.

The expanding carbon footprint of the five biggest tech giants is mainly driven by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence, whose development and operation require huge amounts of energy. Electricity consumption, and the associated CO2 emissions, have doubled at some of these companies over the past three or four years, and even tripled at others, the report found. The same is true of the information technology sector as a whole. If the information technology sector were a country, it would have ranked fifth in greenhouse gas emissions in 2023, ahead of Brazil.

Electricity consumption for powering data centers grew at an average annual rate of 12 percent between 2017 and 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said. It is expected to double by 2030, according to current estimates. If all this additional electricity came from solar and wind power, CO2 emissions would not increase.

Despite ambitious targets for sourcing electricity from renewable sources, most of the electricity used by data centers is still not carbon-neutral. The study notes that around half of data centers’ computing capacity comes from subcontractors, whose emissions are often not counted, as are emissions from the equipment manufacturing supply chain, which accounts for at least a third of the carbon footprint. Investment in renewable energy has therefore so far failed to offset the sector’s growing energy consumption. The authors also say governments are not expected to curb the AI boom, as they see it as a driver of economic growth. Without regulation, therefore, no fundamental changes in companies’ approach can be expected.

The report also sets out a number of ways the tech sector can reduce its carbon footprint even as AI grows rapidly. A key priority is ensuring that data centers are powered by renewable electricity. Extending the useful life of equipment and making greater use of recycled components in hardware manufacturing could also help significantly.