Google warns it’s “going to be difficult” to reach its climate targets amid AI boom with business Report of 16% annual growth In its carbon emissions.
“Our AI infrastructure buildout is currently moving faster than decarbonizing the grid,” said Kate Brandt, Google’s chief sustainability officer.
The company’s report for 2025 was released on Tuesday, just a day before Amazon was to publish its figures. showing an increase of 18%Than 2024.
Put in a long-term perspective, the Amazon, which emitted 80.85 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions last year, saw a 58% increase compared to 2019. Google, which had 18.8 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, saw an 82% increase over the same period.
The Amazon’s emissions as a whole are greater than those of Austria (71 million tons) or Greece (71.5 million tons) and less than those of the Netherlands (145 million tons), according to Data to 2024 from the European Union’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.
AI boosts tech giants’ emissions
Both Big Tech companies have invested heavily in building AI data centers.
Amazon’s emissions from purchasing electricity rose 34% last year, which the company attributed to the data center boom and electrification of its delivery network.
Google also pointed to the resources required to build and operate data centers, as well as the supply chain for chips and servers, to explain its growing carbon footprint.
Google, Amazon’s climate goals are slipping away
The huge increase in emissions has cast doubt on the climate goals of both tech companies.
Amazon, for its part, has pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.
But in this week’s report, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer Cara Hurst acknowledged new obstacles toward reaching the company’s climate standards.
“We may be able to move faster — or demand may slow us down,” Hurst said on the impact of AI technology on Amazon’s environmental goals.
Google’s climate pledge is to halve its 2019-level emissions by 2030.
AI is a challenge for climate action
In the past, such sustainability reports have served to showcase companies’ climate achievements – but in recent years the AI boom has changed their function, highlighting increased energy consumption.
Still, both US digital platforms attempted to spin the latest data to their advantage. For example, Google claims that, if it had not launched its decarbonization initiative, its 2025 emissions would have been five times higher. Amazon says its data centers are more water- and energy-efficient than the industry average.
A UN report to be published in June 2026 It found that data centers consumed so much energy last year that if they were a country, they would rank 11th globally in power consumption. This would put them right between France and Saudi Arabia.
Edited by: Darko Janjevic
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