Colin McMillen: I thought Google had a big announcement some years ago about how their datacenters were now carbon-neutral? Seems fishy.

I thought Google had a big announcement some years ago about how their datacenters were now carbon-neutral? Seems fishy.

The story is always the same: major tech companies tell us they care about the environment to silence criticism, then never actually follow through. Google’s emissions are up ~50% in 5 years, following similar news Microsoft is also blowing past its climate commitments.

Google’s emissions climb nearly 50% in five years due to AI energy demandwww.theguardian.com Tech giant’s goal of reducing climate footprint at risk as it grows increasingly reliant on energy-hungry data centres

They were carbon-neutral in the sense that they bought carbon offsets matching the amount of non-CF energy burned. The amount of total energy burned has gone up considerably since, even if offsets go up by an equal amount. They do try to buy CF energy where available, but it’s still a waste.

Fundamentally they’re still consuming 50% more energy than 2019 in order to tell us to eat rocks and glue. Even if every single watt of that increase is carbon free, it’s still a huge waste.

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