The past five years have seen Google’s data centre electricity consumption increase by 124.9%, with carbon emissions increasing 51% in the same time span.

From 2023 to 2024 alone, Google’s data centres consumed 27% more electricity, though it saw carbon emissions from this sector drop 12%. This is according to Google’s 2025 Environmental Report, which is a self-reported effort towards transparency from the tech giant.

The report shows that Google’s data centres use 84% less energy than the industry average, despite this figure still increasing year-over-year.

The AI boom has certainly contributed to the boom in electricity consumption in data centres across the globe, with alarm bells ringing about what this will mean concerning greenhouse gas emissions and climate devastation.

Figures show that AI will drive energy consumption even further, with the tech set to consume the same amount of energy as Japan – a population of around 124.5 million – by 2030.

Emissions from AI companies are up by 150% since 2020, research from the UN showed. While Google says it drove emissions down, it does not necessarily makes its 27% jump in electricity consumption sustainable.

The reduction in emissions pairing with this energy consumption is an important figure to note – Google says they have achieved this 12% year-on-year reduction by opting for more clean energy sources and improving the efficiency of their data centres.

Google measured its own data centres’ Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), which dropped to 1.09 in 2024, close to the ideal level of 1. These results, which were independently audited by Earnest and Young, indicate that the energy efficiency of Google’s data centres is improving dramatically.

The company also credited its 25 clean energy products as contributing to its emissions reductions.

Interesting, when Google breaks down their own data, it does show AI contributing to a bump emissions.

While scope 1 emissions, which involve direct emissions from Google-owned buildings and vehicles, decreased by 8%, and scope 2 emissions, which revolve around purchased energy for data centres and buildings, dropped by 11% year-on-year, supply chain energy emissions showed a different story.

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Scope 3 energy emissions, which are classified as indirect emissions from other sources in the supply chain such as manufacturing and transportation, increased by 22% year-on-year. Google says this was largely driven by increased data centre capacity, manufacturing requirements for AI, construction, and logistics.

So, when considering the vast supply chain involved in Google’s AI and data centre advancement, Google did not reduce its emissions year on year. In reality, emissions saw a net increase of 3% when considering the supply chain.

While Google reduced direct operational emissions from data centres by 11% year-on-year, data centres were a top contributor to Scope 3 emissions.

Emissions from data centre construction increased by 54% year-on-year, while upstream emissions from the manufacturing and assembly of the technical material for data centres, like servers, rose by 38%. Transportation involved in these data centre projects also jumped 49.7%.