Overview
- Corporate sustainability reports released early July show Google’s greenhouse-gas emissions rose about 18% in 2025 and Amazon’s rose roughly 16%, with both companies blaming rapid AI data-center construction and higher electricity use.
- Google reported that building new data centers produced about 2.3 million tonnes of CO2e in 2025 and that supply-chain emissions climbed about 25%, while its water use for cooling jumped roughly 34% year-on-year.
- Allianz Research estimates global data-center emissions at about 286 million tonnes of CO2 in 2025, a figure 57% higher than prior IEA-based counts, and warns emissions could reach about 643 million tonnes by 2030 without faster power-sector decarbonization.
- A draft EU proposal seen by the Financial Times would relax strict time-and-place rules for renewable certificates and allow nuclear-backed certificates after lobbying by hyperscalers, a shift critics say would weaken emissions-accounting and risk greater short-term reliance on gas.
- Where centers are sited and which grid supplies them matter strongly: the same compute task can produce as much as 24 times more emissions in a high-carbon grid, so decisions now will shape local water demand, power prices and whether new capacity is low-carbon or fossil-fuel based.