Google, AI, & Carbon Emissions – A Lesson In Situational Ethics

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Tech companies have long touted their green energy ambitions. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Amazon have been talking about their plans to power their operations with renewable energy for many years. Google has been the leader of the pack when it comes to zero carbon energy, pledging years ago to be carbon neutral by 2030. But that was before AI — artificial intelligence — happened.

Clearview is a research organization that tracks how tech companies are powering their data centers. In its latest report, it focuses on Google and says it analyzed more than 100 reports, a library of satellite imagery, and 63 data centers either in operation or proposed, to arrive at its conclusions.

The Good Google

To give credit where credit is due, Clearview says Google has invested more in clean energy technology than almost any other entity, public or private, in the world. Since early 2025, the company has signed several gigawatts of new solar and wind PPAs across PJM, ERCOT, SPP, and MISO. It is paying $3 billion to keep aging hydroelectric dams on the grid in Pennsylvania. It is restarting Iowa’s only nuclear plant under a 25-year PPA. And it has signed unique off-take agreements for enhanced geothermal, 100 hour iron-air batteries, advanced nuclear fission, and even fusion energy.

Google is also finding innovative ways to use co-located renewables to connect its data centers in as little as 18 months. It has partnered with AES in Texas to co-locate an 850 MW data center with 600 MW of solar and 945 MW of wind. The way that deal was structured allowed it to bypass the crowded ERCOT large-load queue in the process. In all, Google is bringing nearly 2 GW of data center load online in 2027–2028, powered by co-located wind and solar, without entering the large load queue at all.

That’s important because avoiding the electrical grid means residential and commercial customers won’t see their utility bills increase because of those new data centers — an objection that has fueled opposition to new data facilities in many communities lately.

In addition to is renewable energy investments, Google has also signed agreements with two energy companies to build methane-fired thermal generating stations — one in Illinois and one in Nebraska — that would use carbon capture technology.

The Bad Google

That’s the good news. However, the latest report from Clearview shows that Google is planning a partnership with Crusoe Energy to power a new data center in Armstrong county in the Texas panhandle with a 933 MW methane-fired thermal generating station that will pump 4.5 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.

To put that into perspective, the city of San Francisco emits about 4 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. What is it about AI that is so damned important that makes pumping all that crud into the atmosphere seem like the right thing to do? Are we that shallow that we are willing to destroy our environment so we can send deepfakes of scantily clad women to millions of our friends at the press of a button?

The answer, apparently, is yes. Clearview calls the move part of an “ongoing about-face for Google, which once pledged to be  and has long been seen as a pioneer in clean energy.” Michael Thomas, the founder of Clearview and author of the report, told The Guardian this power plant would be one of the first direct investments in fossil fuel infrastructure that he’s seen with Google.

“Google has spent decades crafting an image as a clean energy leader,” he said. “I’ve always considered them to be the most committed to their climate goals. But these projects suggest a major strategic pivot at the company could be under way.”

When The Guardian asked Google about its partnership with Crusoe for the methane-fired power plant, Chrissy Moy, a company spokesperson, did not deny the project, but said, “We don’t have a contract in place for the plant in Texas.” How much electricity Google might purchase from the plant is not clear, as negotiations appear to be ongoing. She pointed The Guardian to a separate partnership the tech company has in the region for a wind farm project with the utility provider Serena Energy.

Google insists its focus is still on carbon-free energy and that it does not see burning methane as a departure from its climate goals. The company has stated that it is moving from a strategy of buying carbon credits to one of building the grid. Asked at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston last week about how methane fits with the company’s clean energy goals and overall strategy, Google’s head of advanced energy, Michael Terrell, said, “We don’t have anything to say on that.”

As Google has focused more on AI and its high energy needs, the company’s emissions commitments have softened. In 2023, Google wrote in its sustainability report that it was no longer “maintaining operational carbon neutrality” but was still pushing for net zero by 2030. In 2024, the company reported a 48% rise in greenhouse gas emissions since 2019, due mostly to energy consumption by its data center.

In the struggle between being good environmental stewards and making gigantic profits, the environment gets thrown under the bus every time, while corporate spin doctors bend themselves into pretzels to justify the unjustifiable.

Climate Moonshots

By 2025, Google had stopped speaking in terms of concrete 2030 goals and instead framed its emissions ambitions as “climate moonshots” — a term Google uses to denote speculative projects that may or may not come to fruition.

“While we remain committed to our climate moonshots, it’s become clear that achieving them is now more complex and challenging across every level,” Google wrote in its 2025 environmental report, which describes the company’s climate goals as “ambition-based” and notes that AI’s rapid growth is driving “significant uncertainties” around emissions. What a bunch of weasel worded corporate bullshit!

Meta, Amazon and Microsoft, which have also long pledged net-zero carbon goals, are turning to methane to power their AI data centers. The Guardian reports that Meta is building an enormous facility in Louisiana that is slated to run on methane and Amazon has several multi-gigawatt data centers powered by methane gas. Microsoft just announced a new gas project for a data center in West Virginia and signed a deal with Chevron this week to build a 2.5-gigawatt gas power plant in west Texas.

For years, “these hyperscalers have remained committed to their climate goals and have resisted the siren call of natural gas,” said Thomas. “But what has happened in the last few months is that the story has become more complicated. There’s this tension with the race to build AI.”

And so once again the pursuit of profits has become the sole arbiter of corporate responsibility. More wars will be fought over fossil fuels so we can have Google automatically summarize our emails for us. The idiocy of humans knows no limits, apparently, and probably never will.