Source: TechCrunch
Amazon and Google's carbon emissions are rising because their AI infrastructure—data centers, training compute, inference at scale—requires massive amounts of electricity, directly contradicting their net-zero commitments. Both companies are now negotiating nuclear power deals and reversing renewable energy timelines. The supposed efficiency gains of AI are being overwhelmed by the raw power consumption of running these systems. The cost of the AI boom is being paid in delayed decarbonization. The companies best positioned to absorb that cost are instead choosing to slow their climate progress rather than constrain their AI expansion.