The development of artificial intelligence (AI) has proven to be fatal to reducing carbon emissions.

According to Google's '2024 Environmental Report' released on the 2nd, Google's carbon emissions have surged by nearly 50% since 2019, and in 2023 alone, they increased by 13% compared to the previous year.

Regarding these causes, Google stated that the total power consumption of data centers will increase by 17% in 2023, and that due to the rapid development and increase in demand for AI, data center energy consumption is increasing, and carbon emissions are also increasing.

Training AI and providing appropriate services to users requires large-scale data centers, which inevitably consumes enormous amounts of electricity.

In particular, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, which operate large-scale data centers, are actively increasing the capacity of their data centers to keep pace with the rapidly growing AI trend, and as a result, power consumption is increasing exponentially.

Accordingly, various plans are being proposed to supply electricity to meet the electricity demand of these data centers, and there is even talk of installing additional new nuclear power plants.

Google said it is working on additional solar energy projects in response to the situation, but said its goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2030 is very difficult.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs said that data centers will account for 8% of total U.S. electricity consumption in 10 years, and the industry predicts that how to supply renewable energy power to data centers will be a key factor in reducing carbon emissions.