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Google’s carbon emissions soar by 48% due to AI (www.climateaction.org)

submitted 4 months ago by 0x815@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

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The leap in emissions is largely due to energy-guzzling data centers and supply chain emissions necessary to power artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The report estimated that in 2023, Google’s data centers alone account for up to 10% of global data center electricity consumption. Their data center electricity and water consumption both increased 17% between 2022 and 2023.

Google released 14.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide just last year, 13% higher than the year before.

Climate scientists have shown concerns as Big Tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft continue to invest billons of dollars into AI.

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[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Or at least not decommissioning old ones. A dollar invested into new solar or wind goes further than new nuclear right now, but we'll see if it tips more towards nuclear once the grid is a higher percentage intermittent and needs a lot more energy storage with it.

Modular nuclear reactors seem really cool though for replacing large long term generators like at construction or excavation sites.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

a lot of older nuclear plants were built in the 70s and 80s and those plants are going to be EOL even with extensions, unless we're going to extend the lifecycle of those a second time. They should probably be decommissioned, unfortunately.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago

I obviously don't know all the cases, but if extending the life a second time is cost comparable to renewables, yes we absolutely should do it.