The operational carbon emissions of the world’s tech giants jumped by an average of 150 per cent between 2020 and 2023, a new report from the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union has estimated.
This spike is being directly driven by the voracious appetite for energy from the growing artificial intelligence (AI) industry and rapidly growing data center use.
The report notes that companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Meta (Facebook and Instagram’s parent company) and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) have seen their emissions explode.
By far the biggest rise was that of Amazon, whose operational emissions soared 182% over the three-year period — significantly more than at Microsoft (155%), Meta (145%) and Alphabet (138%). This includes direct emissions from company-owned sources and emissions attributed to the production of purchased energy.
At its heart, the challenge is that AI research and implementations need Brazilian-sized data centers, especially for large language models and generative AI. It requires gargantuan data centers that are burning electricity at a nightmarish pace.
On an annual basis, data center power consumption has increased by 12% every year from 2017, to 415 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 1.5% of the global power demand by the end of 2023. Estimates put that figure at a potential 945 TWh by 2030, almost double Japan’s total annual electricity use.
“Digital technologies rolled out at scale across the world have the potential to significantly reduce global emissions and the world’s overall energy usage,” said Doreen Bogdan-Martin, head of the ITU. The agency cautions that if unchecked, emissions from top-emitting AI systems could exceed 102.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.
On top of that, the report notes there is very limited standardized reporting requirements for AI-specific emissions or energy consumption, making it challenging to fully understand the environmental impact of the technology. Although many tech giants have promised to use renewable energy, the enormous energy appetite of AI is moving faster than the shift to clean power.
The results highlight a pressing need for international standards and regulatory parameters that enforce responsible artificial intelligence (AI) development and increase transparency in emissions reporting, guiding the tech industry toward a more sustainable future.
