According to Google's latest environmental report, the company has completed its last massive purchase of cheap carbon credits, so the tech giant has stopped claiming to be carbon neutral. This was reported by Bloomberg.
The company began claiming to be carbon neutral in its operations in 2007. This status was based on the purchase of carbon credits in accordance with the amount of emissions generated by data centers, offices and business travel. However, in its latest report, the company announced that it will end this practice as of 2023.
Now Google has announced that it aims to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2030.
“In line with a changing market — including a more robust carbon-removal ecosystem we helped catalyze — we’ve shifted our strategy. We aim to avoid or reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to reach our absolute emissions reduction target,” said a company representative.
Such changes in Google's strategy are caused, in particular, by the attention of the tech giant and other companies to the development of artificial intelligence, which requires a lot of energy to process data. In 2023, Google's total emissions were 48% higher than in 2019. Total energy consumption doubled during this period.
The day before, it was reported that the company's new search engine with AI-generated answers consumes 10 times more energy than a conventional search engine. In total, all AI-generated answers can consume as much energy as the whole of Ireland.