WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Google's Greenhouse gas or GHG emissions increased 13
percent year-over-year in 2023, and the growth was nearly 50 percent compared to
2019 amid the skyrocketing energy demand related to artificial intelligence or
AI, as per its 2024 environmental report.

The search engine giant, which is aiming to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030,
attributed the significant growth in emissions primarily to increased data
center energy consumption and supply chain emissions.

According to the firm, the growth in total GHG emissions highlight the challenge
of reducing emissions while compute intensity increases and it grows technical
infrastructure investment to support the AI transition.

As per the report, the company's total data center electricity consumption grew
17 percent in 2023, despite maintaining a 100 percent global renewable energy
match.

Google said, 'As Google's infrastructure continues to power the digital
transition, providing numerous economic benefits across the globe, we expect
this trend to continue in the future. But we see our growing infrastructure as
an opportunity to drive the innovations and investments needed to power a
low-carbon economy.'

Google's data center consumption of more than 24 TWh in 2023 translates to
around 7 percent to 10 percent of global data center electricity consumption and
approximately 0.1 percent of global electricity demand.

A Google-owned and -operated data center is, on average, around 1.8 times as
energy efficient as a typical enterprise data center, it said.

The company further said it maintained a global average of around 64 percent
carbon-free energy across its data centers and offices to 2023 from 2022,
despite growth in electricity demand over this period.

According to Google, 'While we advanced clean energy on many of the grids where
we operate, there are still some hard-to-decarbonize regions like Asia Pacific
where CFE isn't readily available. In addition, we often see longer lead times
between initial investments and construction of clean energy projects and the
resulting GHG reductions from them.'

In the report, Google added that it is committed to developing AI responsibly by
working to address its environmental footprint through model optimization,
efficient infrastructure, and emissions reductions.



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