A new investigation has revealed what could be major gaps between Big Tech’s reported data centre emissions and their environmental claims.

Data first reported by The Guardian suggests that data centres owned by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta could be emitting 662% more carbon than the companies have officially disclosed.

Four of the ‘Big Five’ tech companies, namely Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple, were included in the analysis, with Amazon left out of the calculation due to the difficulty in isolating data centre specific emissions under its business model.

The investigation, drawing on company reports, alleges that Apple’s data centre emissions are 2.2 times higher than officially stated, Meta’s are 1.9 times higher, while Microsoft and Google are emitting 1.4 times more than reported.

With the paper claiming that overall emissions for these firms is 7.62 times higher than reported, the companies are now facing accusations of greenwashing and ‘creative accounting’ to hide their true environmental impact.

In order to boost their green credentials, tech firms are known to purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). These certificates allow companies to offset a portion of their electricity consumption with renewable energy. 

However, according to The Guardian’s investigation, the catch is that the renewable energy doesn’t have to be used directly at the company’s facilities. Instead, the energy can be used anywhere, whether nearby or even across the globe, but still be counted toward public reports.

Using location-based metrics, the paper says, can give a clearer idea of the scope of Big Tech emissions than market-based numbers. For example, Meta, which reported emissions of 273 metric tons of CO2 in 2022, would see that number surge to over 3.8 million metric tons using the more accurate location-based method, according to the research.

The growing environmental impact of data centres is increasingly becoming a major concern. According to the International Energy Agency, electricity consumption from data centres, and the cryptocurrency sector could double by 2026, potentially reaching more than 1,000 TWh.

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The rapid growth of AI development by Big Tech companies is significantly driving up the demand for data centre electricity. Research from Goldman Sachs forecasts a 160% rise in data centre power consumption due to AI by 2030, while a study from Morgan Stanley estimates that the AI boom will result in approximately 2.5 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions globally by the end of the decade.

Jesse Dodge, a senior research analyst at the Allen Institute for AI, previously told NPR: “One query to ChatGPT uses approximately as much electricity as could light one light bulb for about 20 minutes. You can imagine with millions of people using something like that every day, that adds up to a really large amount of electricity.”

Earlier this year, Google’s annual environmental report blamed supply chain and data centre energy consumption as the main culprits for its metric rise in carbon emissions, saying that it now “won’t be easy” to meet its “extremely ambitious” net zero by 2030 goal.