Can the climate survive the insatiable energy demands of the AI arms race?

Google’s emissions have climbed nearly 50% in five years due to AI energy demand. Photograph: Google Handout/EPA

The artificial intelligence boom has driven big tech share prices to fresh highs, but at the cost of the sector’s climate aspirations.

Google admitted on Tuesday that the technology is threatening its environmental targets after revealing that datacentres, a key piece of AI infrastructure, had helped increase its greenhouse gas emissions by 48% since 2019. It said “significant uncertainty” around reaching its target of net zero emissions by 2030 – reducing the overall amount of CO2 emissions it is responsible for to zero – included “the uncertainty around the future environmental impact of AI, which is complex and difficult to predict”.