Google's carbon dioxide emissions rise again

Another increase in CO2 emissions: This is according to Google's sustainability report, which the company behind the well-known search engine has now published. According to the report, the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted has increased by eleven percent to around 11.5 million tons. Compared to 2019, this is an increase of 51 percent.

However, the figure does not represent the full extent. Google only refers to "ambition-based" emissions here. With this definition, the company excludes emissions from its CO2 calculation that occur within its supply chains and over which Google claims to have no influence, and presumably no ambition. For example, certain purchased goods or food are excluded.

The true extent is greater

A correspondingly expanded scale of CO2 emissions can be found in a table in the appendix of the report. According to this, Google caused around 15.2 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2024. For comparison: According to the environmental protection organization Worldwide Fund for Nature, a medium-sized coal-fired power plant emits around ten million tons of CO2 per year – as much as all Swiss cars combined in one year.

In its report, Google also insists on a reduction in CO2 emissions in the area of data centers. However, energy consumption continues to rise due to the high cost of developing artificial intelligence (AI) models. Compared to 2019, CO2 emissions from data centers are also significantly higher. Six years ago, the figure was around half a million tons of CO2; in 2024, it was slightly less than three million tons. This is still just below the figure of around three million tons in 2023, which Google is now highlighting positively.

Google: CO2 emissions difficult to control

Google also sees AI as one of the key factors that is difficult to influence when it comes to controlling its own CO2 emissions. The rapid development in this area makes it difficult to predict the company's future energy requirements.

The sustainability report also criticizes changes in climate and energy policy, the "slower than necessary" introduction of CO2-neutral energy supplies and a lack of CO2-neutral solutions in certain markets. These external factors could therefore affect the costs, feasibility and timetable of the company's own progress. And to cope with this, flexibility is required.

The published figures confirm Google's trend away from the goal that the company set itself in 2019: That was when the search engine giant wanted to produce only half the annual CO2 emissions by 2030 that it reported for 2019. Although this target was never officially canceled –, the CO2 figures have since risen by just over half – measured in terms of actual emissions, not "ambition-based" ones.

(nen)