It was in 2020: Microsoft committed to having negative carbon emissions by 2030. Four years later, the results are catastrophic: the emissions of the firm founded by Bill Gates increased by 30%, subcontractors Understood. “This increase mainly comes from the construction of more data centers”writes the group in its annual report, published at the beginning of May. “In 2020, we unveiled our project to reach the moon in terms of carbon reduction. This was before the explosion of artificial intelligence [IA] », declared Brad Smith, Microsoft vice-president of sustainable development, to the Bloomberg agency. Today, he notes, “the moon is five times further away than it was in 2020”.
The American digital giants, with their gigantic data centers, have become energy sinkholes and the phenomenon is growing with the computing needs linked to artificial intelligence. According to the latest report, published in January by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the United States is home to a third of the 8,000 data centers on the planet. And their share of the country’s electricity consumption is expected to jump from 4% to 6% between 2022 and 2026, going from 200 to 260 terawatt hours, or approximately the equivalent of the production of 43 nuclear reactors.
Between July 2023 and the end of June, Microsoft will have spent some $50 billion (46.44 billion euros) on its data centers and the trend is expected to continue. “The answer is not to slow down the expansion of AI, but to accelerate the work needed to make it more environmentally friendly”, specified Mr. Smith. The firm strives to arrive with its turnkey renewable energy. At the beginning of May, it announced that it had signed an agreement with Canadian Brookfield Asset Management to invest more than $10 billion in the development of renewable energy capacities for its data centers.
Scissor effect
To reduce their carbon footprint, American groups use a whole series of more or less credible mechanisms. In some cases, they buy renewable energy credits to pretend they are using green energy, but this technique is akin to buying rights to pollute. And, increasingly, they are entering into agreements to purchase green electricity.
It is true that the conditions are becoming more and more strict: a decree signed by the American president, Joe Biden, at the end of 2021, requires that in 2030 half of electricity be used at the time it is produced and in the region of consumption. In short, we cannot claim to use solar energy produced during the day in Texas in New York at night. This rule avoids misleading vagueness. Sometimes, listening to New York companies, we have the feeling that there are ten Niagara Falls as everyone prides themselves on using the renewable energy of the famous cataract.
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