Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta data centre emissions are 662% higher than they officially reported, analysis by The Guardian claims.
Crunching data from 2020 to 2022, the UK newspaper found that emissions from in-house data centres could be almost eight times higher when using location-based metrics over creative accounting.
Officially, Amazon is known to be the highest emitter of the big five tech companies – with Apple reporting to have less than half in 2022. The Guardian noted that Amazon was not considered in the analysis as its business model makes it difficult to isolate data centre-specific emissions.
According to the International Energy Agency, data centres accounted for 1% to 1.5% of total global electricity consumption in 2022, and that was before the launch of ChatGPT.
Now, generative AI has only worsened energy consumption, with ChatGPT using ten times more electricity than a standard Google search according to investment banking firm Goldman Sachs.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley projects that data centre emissions will add 2.5 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030.
Despite this, all five big tech firms have claimed carbon neutrality, although Google dropped the label last year, with Amazon announcing it met its goal seven years early.
According to a representative from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an advocacy group made up of Amazon employees dissatisfied with the firm’s climate action: “It’s down to creative accounting.”
“Amazon – despite all the PR and propaganda that you’re seeing about their solar farms, about their electric vans – is expanding its fossil fuel use, whether it’s in data centres or whether it’s in diesel trucks.”
What is creative accounting?
Creative accounting is when companies make their environmental impact seem better than it really is. According to Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, despite Amazon promoting its solar farms and electric vans, the company is still increasing its use of fossil fuels, like in data centres and diesel trucks.
A key part of this creative accounting is the use of renewable energy certificates (RECs). These certificates let companies claim they are using renewable energy, but the energy doesn’t have to be directly powering their facilities. Instead, they just need to buy the certificates to match part of their energy use.
Using location-based metrics, which is a calculation of emissions in the area the data is being processed, provides a more “accurate picture of the emissions associated with the energy actually being consumed,” said Jay Dietrich, the research director of sustainability at Uptime Institute, a data centre advisory and research organisation.
For instance, Meta reports its 2022 Scope 2 emissions (produced by the purchase of electricity, heat, or cooling) to be 273 metric tons of CO2 equivalent, all attributed to data centres. However, under the location-based accounting system, the number jumps to more than 3.8 million metric tons.
Similarly, Microsoft reported its emissions to be 280,782 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2022, however, the location-based accounting method found 6.1 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent.
Read more on the hidden cost of AI and digital transformation.
