The tech giant, which has seen its planet-warming emissions rise because of artificial intelligence, has stopped buying cheap offsets behind the neutrality claim. The company now aims to reach net-zero carbon by 2030.
The tech giant, which has seen its planet-warming emissions rise because of artificial intelligence, has stopped buying cheap offsets behind the neutrality claim. The company now aims to reach net-zero carbon by 2030.
Google's source of carbon offsets historically has been from things like funding projects to reduce gas leaks or capture off-gasses at landfills. Who knows if the numbers add up, but it's better than not doing it.
Google has also historically put quite a bit of effort into making their data centers green. Some of that is productive stuff like insulation, more efficient cooling systems, running computers on low-power mode when possible, etc. But a lot of it is also just finding a place with a green power plant they can buy energy from, which isn't really helping anyone (power plants generally run at capacity; someone else was going to use that energy and it doesn't matter who does it).
I would not really blame AI for the change, so much as Google having spent the last 10 years putting bean-counters in charge of more stuff and becoming more aligned with the id of capital.
In theory it does kind of matter in the sense that if every company were committed to using green power in the same way that it would necessitate more such plants being built. If another company is so committed and Google is using all the green power, there'd have to be more green power plants built to satisfy the demand. And Google doesn't really have much control over what kind of power other companies prefer to use.
But yeah, ultimately that's still a small thing