Soaring Emissions from Microsoft, Google Highlight

Soaring Emissions from Microsoft, Google Highlight Climate Change Challenges of AI

The use of artificial intelligence around the globe is increasing as days go by, as is energy consumption by the technology. Senior research analyst at the Allen Institute for AI, Jesse Dodge, has been conducting research on how AI consumes energy. Thus far, researchers have determined that artificial intelligence uses a lot more power to generate its answers as compared to traditional internet.

One report by Goldman Sachs determined that an inquiry made on ChatGPT required almost 10 times as much electricity as a question posed on Google. It is expected that as artificial intelligence advances, the need for energy shall continue to increase.

Currently, most companies working on AI, such as OpenAI, prefer not to report their emissions. This is mainly because in America, most of the energy used in AI is produced from burning fossil fuels, including gas and coal. These fuels are the main drivers of climate change.

Last week, however, Google released a sustainability report that discloses its greenhouse-gas emissions. The tech giant’s latest data shows that in 2024, its emissions increased by 48%. It attributed the increase to supply-chain emissions and consumption of energy at its data center.

While Google’s objective is to reach net-zero emissions in 2030, Dodge explained that its focus on building the best artificial intelligence system had led to the consumption of a tremendous amount of energy that had, in turn, upped its carbon-dioxide emissions. Artificial intelligence needs computer power from thousands of servers in data centers, and data centers require tremendous amounts of electricity to meet this demand.

Microsoft, another company in the tech space, had made a pledge to be carbon negative by 2030. However, the company is also facing issues due to its focus on artificial intelligence.

In a sustainability report released earlier in the year, Microsoft revealed that its CO2 emissions had risen by 29% since 2020. The company attributed this mainly to the construction of additional data centers that had been optimized to support artificial intelligence workloads. The report highlighted that the electricity and infrastructure required for these technologies had allowed new issues to pop up that got in the way of meeting commitments on sustainability.

A separate report by The Washington Post determined that the demand for electricity countrywide had gotten so intense that plans to put several coal plants out of action had been postponed.

Currently, the growing data center industry is focused on northern Virginia. Forecasts expect that this region will need energy that could power six million households by 2030 to meet the energy demand from data centers.

Entities that are focused on implementing ESG principles, such as Reflex Advanced Materials Corp. (CSE: RFLX) (OTCQB: RFLXF), may need to think through their energy use as this metric alone could hold the potential to delay the attainment of emissions reduction in the way that Microsoft and Google provide examples.

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Reflex Advanced Materials Corp. (CSE: RFLX) (OTCQB: RFLXF) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/RFLXF

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