AI
A warning sign about AI’s real cost, courtesy of Google and Amazon
Google and Amazon released their annual sustainability reports, revealing that their pursuit of AI has significantly hindered their net-zero carbon goals.
Key takeaways
- Google's total carbon emissions increased by 25% since last year.
- Amazon's total carbon emissions increased by 16% since last year.
- The rise in emissions is heavily driven by Scope 3 emissions, including GPU purchases and data center construction.
- Amazon added more than 1.2 gigawatts of data center capacity globally in Q4 2025 alone.
- Tech companies are beginning to invest heavily in natural gas power plants to keep pace with AI's power demands.
Google and Amazon released their annual sustainability reports, revealing that their pursuit of AI has significantly hindered their net-zero carbon goals. Google's total carbon emissions surged 25% compared to last year, while Amazon's rose 16%. The increases are primarily driven by Scope 3 emissions, which include data center construction, GPU purchases, and semiconductor manufacturing. To keep pace with AI demands, both companies are expanding data center capacity - with Amazon adding over 1.2 gigawatts in Q4 2025 alone - and starting to invest in natural gas power plants.
In their words
“To meet strong customer demand, in 2025 we added more data center capacity globally than any other company, including more than 1.2 gigawatt (GW) in Q4 alone”
By the numbers
- +25%
- Increase in Google's total carbon emissions since last year
- +16%
- Increase in Amazon's total carbon emissions since last year
- +2.1M
- Metric tons increase in Google's Scope 3 emissions last year
- +1.2GW
- Data center capacity added by Amazon in Q4 2025 alone
How it unfolded
- Google's baseline year for assessing performance
- Amazon added more data center capacity globally than any company
- Google and Amazon released their sustainability reports
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