In AI arms race, climate progress left at the starting gate

UN report makes it clear that climate priorities are not even in the running

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The AI arms race among tech giants was always going to be a power grab. Electric power, that is. But it wasn’t until late last week that we got an idea at just what expense the battle for artificial intelligence superiority has been for the industry's climate ambitions.

A United Nations report tallied the emissions of 200 companies and estimated that the biggest four tech pioneers of AI saw indirect carbon emissions surge 150% from 2020 to 2023.

Amazon AMZN 0.00%↑ had the largest increase, followed by Microsoft MSFT 0.00%↑ , Meta META 0.00%↑ and Alphabet GOOGL 0.00%↑ , according to the UN’s unit for digital technologies. Most of the growth came from the increased purchase of electricity to power the growing number of data centers needed to keep up with the latest capacities for AI. Water usage, to cool the systems in the data centers, was also a major driver, the report said.