Google says AI is not to blame for the company’s high carbon emissions

Google is pushing back against claims that its growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a major contributor to the company's rising carbon emissions. This comes after their recent environmental report revealed a 48% increase in CO2 emissions compared to their 2019 baseline.

In a Fortune interview during their Brainstorm Tech conference, Google's Chief Scientist, Jeff Dean, downplayed the significance of AI in their emissions increase. "There's been a lot of focus on the increasing energy usage of AI, and from a very small base that usage is definitely increasing," Dean said. "I think people often conflate that with overall data center usage - of which AI is a very small portion right now but growing fast”

In other words, AI may be a rapidly expanding workload, but it currently represents only a small portion of the overall global data center burden. The true culprit behind their rising carbon footprint lies with their sprawling network of data centers, which house the vast amount of computing power needed to run Google's services, including Search, Gmail, and YouTube.

Despite the current situation, Dean said that Google remains committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. They are actively pursuing renewable energy sources for their data centers and have invested heavily in wind and solar farms.

However, he added that progress is "not necessarily a linear thing" as some of Google's efforts to source clean energy from providers will not bear fruit for several years.

While Dean's assertions may be true, they don’t change AI’s high energy demands and concerns over future consequences. A Goldman Sachs report recently revealed that AI will drive global data center power demand up by 160 percent come 2030, and that carbon dioxide emissions may more than double compared with 2022 levels.

Demand for higher performing (and therefore higher power consuming) AI servers is expected to increase with market watcher estimating that AI server shipments will jump by 41.5 percent this year and will account for 65 percent of the total server market value.

Google isn’t alone in the increased emissions saga. Microsoft's own Environmental Sustainability Report paints a similar picture. The company reported a 29.1% rise in CO2 emissions since 2020 attributing the increase to the rapid expansion of their data center infrastructure.