New analysis exposes CO2 promises of the tech giants
Criticized as greenwashing, now supported by numbers: The climate promises of the tech companies are increasingly looking like imagination. An analysis shows how Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Google build a green facade with arithmetic tricks, behind which emissions rise enormously.
Big Tech in the climate back: promised vs. consumed
A few years ago, Apple, Google, Meta and Amazon Grand announced that they can do so by 2040 CO₂-neutral at the latest. Microsoft even went on: from 2030, the group promised to remove more CO₂ from the atmosphere than they emit. These promises were made before the AI wave really got going – today they look like it fell out of time.
Because reality has moved fundamentally. Data centers are now among the largest electricity consumers in the Tech world – Microsoft alone consumes three times as much electricity today as in 2020. Even with Meta and Amazon, emissions have almost doubled in the same period.
The structure of infrastructure for AI applications also tightens the problem: emissions rise faster than the expansion of renewable energy can keep up. At META, there is now about a third of the computing power on third -party data centers – their emissions have so far not been fully included.
The arithmetic tricks
The problem is not only technical, but above all accounting – and shows at a closer look that the publicly communicated climate targets sometimes border on imagination. Many of the companies examined work with so -called market -based methods to show their electricity consumption as “green”. This means that they compensate for the annual consumption with certificates – even if they obtain coal stream in practice at certain times. The Report of the Newclimate Institute ((PDF) warns that this type of accounting only maintains an apparent climate promise: “The actual effect of many goals can hardly be evaluated.”
Microsoft and Google have promised to only use CO₂ -free electricity around the clock by 2030 – a demanding model with an hourly, network -located accounting. However, according to the report, even these projects contain electricity from non -sustainable sources that fall out of the balance with a clever invoice. Apple, in turn, refers to progress in its suppliers, such as increasing shares of long -term power contracts.
But here, too, the proportion of real renewable sources is difficult to check according to the analysis of the experts. That is why the authors also say clearly: the use of “climate-neutral” labels for individual products is misleading. A fundamental conflict of goals is thus extended by the climate strategies of all companies examined: Growth and cutting in emission have so far been running side by side – not with each other.
The energy consumption increases rapidly, especially due to the expansion of data centers for AI applications. Companies publish data on the electricity consumption of their own server farms. But a large part of the computing power runs through external service providers. There are hardly any transparent information on power consumption or emissions for these outsourced servers – they simply do not appear in many climate silence.
Growth allows all ambitions to fizzle out
At the same time, many companies rely on compensation measures: Microsoft, for example, has concluded contracts of 22 million tons of CO₂ withdrawal, for example through bio-peak projects or CO₂ storage in the subsoil. However, according to the report, such compensations are not a substitute for real savings if the emissions continue to increase at the same time. The central criticism: As long as electricity consumption by AI and cloud services grows unchecked, ambitious climate goals also fizzle out in accounting.
So what remains of the climate promise of the tech group? The report calls for a change of course: away from mere emission goals, towards concrete transitions-for example through real 24/7 power supply, measurable goals for hardware life and transparent information on the use of recycled materials. Even if the tech companies like to make it work differently: all of this is missing so far. The emissions from production, electricity consumption and platform operation are too often treated as technical details – although they make up most of the footprint.
When profits attract
It cannot be denied that companies such as Apple, Microsoft or Google invest in renewable energies and set up programs to reduce emission. However, the report shows with remarkable clarity that such measures lose importance at the moment in which new growth opportunities attract. If data centers double or triple their electricity consumption within a few years, even ambitious climate goals come into the realm of illusion.
Investments in green energy: China remains unmatched that CO₂ promises are often more marketing strategies than climate strategies, thus gets new substance. As long as your accounting methods are defined and systemic gaps such as outsourced data centers or emissions from platform services such as online marketplaces or digital advertising remain unregulated, the “design scope” for publicly effective greenwashing remains large.
Critics see a further evidence that without clear standards and regulatory guardrails, even ambitious climate goals are to the facade – especially when economic growth attracts.
