From Robert Bryce Substack
Robert Bryce
In 2017, Google announced that it had reached “100% renewable energy for our global operations.” The company continued, “Google became carbon neutral in 2007, and since then, our carbon footprint has grown slower than our business – proof, 10 years later, that economic growth can be separated from environmental impact and resource use.”
That “decoupling” didn’t last long.
In fact, since 2017, Google’s environmental report shows that the company’s electricity use, CO2 emissions, and carbon intensity have increased. The latest numbers came out last Tuesday when the search and advertising colossus released its environmental report 2024. And the numbers don’t lie. As seen in the chart below, since 2017, Google’s CO2 emissions have quadrupled to a company record of 14.3 million tons by 2023.
Why is this important? There are many reasons. First among them: Google has been one of the most aggressive promoters of the idea that this is a different company, a “clean” industry from Silicon Valley that will not pollute like old industrial companies such as US Steel or ExxonMobil. But the latest numbers show that Google, at its root, is an industrial company that relies on massive digital foundries – that description is more than the anodyne “data center” – that uses a staggering amount of juice. In addition, the company’s electricity needs cannot be met by wind and solar alone. Or to put it bluntly, Google’s claims about distancing itself from the realities of the physical world and the weirdness of the power grid are little more than corporate greenwashing.
Second, Google is not only a Big Tech giant, but also one of the most dominant companies of our time. It controls 92% of the search engine market. For comparison, Microsoft’s Bing has a 3% share. Google is the most visited website in the world. Coming in second is YouTube, which is owned by Google, or rather, by its parent company, Alphabet. Thus, whether we like it or not, Google has become interwoven with our online experience, and as shown in the graph below, that experience has a growing carbon footprint.
What caused the increase? The new report says emissions will increase by 13% by 2023, “primarily driven by data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions.”
Third, Google has aggressively moved to squash debates about climate change across its platforms, including on YouTube. In 2021, as reported by Axios, Google announced a policy that:
Prevent climate deniers from monetizing content on the platform through advertising or creator payments… content that contradicts “the established scientific consensus on the existence and causes of climate change.”
As the chart below shows, the CO2 intensity of Google’s operations has doubled since 2020. That’s not misinformation. The numbers are straight from the company’s report. (The report is long and difficult to read. Furthermore, the company is inconsistent in its reporting. I used the 2024, 2021, and 2019 reports.) But don’t expect to see these trends reported by major media outlets.
Fourth, just as Google dominates search, it also dominates the stock market. If you own an index fund that tracks the S&P 500, you own Google. The company’s $2.4 trillion market capitalization and growing growth make it a must-have for exchange-traded funds that invest in growth stocks or the broader stock market. For example, Alphabet represents about 4.3% of its holdings in the S&P 500 ETF State Street (Ticker: SPY). Thus, Google’s rising greenhouse gas emissions reflect the broader US economy
Finally, Google has signaled that it cannot achieve net zero. The company’s chief sustainability officer, Kate Brandt, told the Associated Press last week that reaching net zero by 2030 “is a very ambitious goal. We know it won’t be easy and our approach must continue to evolve. (For more on the topic, see the piece June 3, “Vaclav Smil Calls Bullshit on Net Zero.”) Brandt continued, saying that companies must manage “many uncertainties, including uncertainty about the future impact of AI’s environment. .”
Indeed, given the trajectory of emissions growth and the ongoing push to build massive new data centers for AI – especially in countries where electricity grids depend mainly on hydrocarbons – it’s safe to assume that Google’s emissions will continue to rise for several year. In April, it announced it would spend $3 billion on new data centers in the US, including $2 billion in Indiana, which gets about 45% of its electricity from coal-fired power plants. Furthermore, in its latest environmental report, the company said that despite progress in “clean” energy, there are “hard-to-decarbonize regions like Asia Pacific” where carbon-free electricity “is not available. In addition, we often see longer lead times between the initial investment and the construction of clean energy projects and the reduction of GHG from them.
Of course, Amazon and other Big Tech companies are (finally!) showing interest in nuclear energy. In March, Amazon Web Services acquired Talen Energy’s data center campus in Pennsylvania, which will allow AWS to purchase 480 megawatts of power from the nearby 2.5 gigawatt Susquehanna nuclear plant. But there isn’t enough nuclear capacity for all the Big Tech companies to power a fission-powered digital foundry, not in the US and certainly not in other countries.
Last week, I spoke with Doug Hohulin, a Kansas City-based technologist who works on AI and follows the data center sector. He sums up the predicament facing Google and other power-hungry members of Big Tech. “There is just not enough wind and solar available,” he said. “Nuclear used to look bad, and now it’s good.”
Both statements are true. Now, it looks like Google and other Big Tech companies will continue to increase emissions until the US and other countries get lots of new reactors built and online. This won’t be quick and it won’t be cheap. But Google’s emissions show that Big Tech doesn’t have many other options.
Talk About Involvement In Nantucket And Newport This Week On Offshore Wind
I will be giving two talks this week on offshore wind. On Monday, July 8th, I will be in Nantucket speaking at the Dreamland Theatre. Time starts at 6 p.m. Click here for tickets.
On Tuesday, the 9th, I will be in Newport, RI, at Emmanuel Church. The start time of the event is 5:30 pm. More info on the Newport event is available here.
If you are in the area, please attend. I will discuss the history of the offshore wind industry, the threat it poses to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, and the future of American energy. Hint: It’s still N2N: natural gas for nuclear.
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