Prof. Kevin J. Kircher: "In 2023, Google’s carbon intensity climbed to 11.4 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per million dollars of revenue. That’s up 101% since 2019, and up nearly 25% since 2022." Microsoft's "increased by 20% since 2022."

"In 2023, Google’s carbon intensity climbed to 11.4 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per million dollars of revenue. That’s up 101% since 2019, and up nearly 25% since 2022." Microsoft's "increased by 20% since 2022."

Google just released numbers on AI and emissions — and they aren’t good | Latitude Mediawww.latitudemedia.com And as the artificial intelligence arms race wages on, the company expects emissions to keep going up.

Carbon intensity is not a great metric - physics cares about absolute emissions, not intensity - but even by this metric big tech is doing pretty badly.

Yah it's remarkable that even by the most cheatiest metric in the toolbox for ESG reports, Google and Microsoft are flying at full speed in the wrong direction

The aviation industry uses it a lot (how surprising) — getting more efficient on the fuel means more passengers and more planes.

It’s a great metric if what you are measuring is decarbonization progress within a company or industry—the metric important to policy. Of course climate and physics doesn’t really care about that like you rightly point out.

Carbon intensity is useful for those who like "line go up/down" types, but the reality is that it needs to become ~negative~ before we are where we need to be.

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