Big Tech Data Center Emissions Much Higher than Reported
From 2020-2022, the actual emissions from data centers owned by Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple were “about 662% or 7.62 times – higher than officially reported,” reports Isabel O’Brien.
“Amazon is the largest emitter of the big five tech companies by a mile,” says O’Brien, with second-place Apple’s emissions totalling less than half of Amazon’s in 2022. However, Amazon’s business model “makes it difficult to isolate data center-specific emissions figures for the company.”
To help understand the discrepancy in reporting, this article describes various tools and metrics used to calculate emissions – such as renewable energy certificates, which companies can purchase to offset fossil fuel-based energy use – and explains the difference between “market-based” and “location-based” emissions.
O’Brien notes that data centers already accounted for 1% to 1.5% of global electricity consumption in 2022 – before the AI boom. Additionally, “AI is far more energy-intensive on data centers than typical cloud-based applications. According to Goldman Sachs, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search, and data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030.”
Read more at the Guardian.
See also:
Energy Efficiency in the Data Center by Norbert Deuschle
Data Center Energy Use Surges Due to AI by Amber Ankerholz
OpenAI Asked US to Approve Energy-Guzzling 5GW Data Centers from Ars Technica
A Tour of Green Coding Initiatives by Kristian Kissling
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