Google и Amazon не могут выполнить климатические обещания из-за энергоаппетита ИИ

Google and Amazon have officially fallen behind their own climate targets: massive deployment of AI infrastructure requires enormous volumes of electricity, making zero-emission promises unattainable within the stated timeframes, reports The Guardian on July 6, 2026.

Why net-zero became unattainable

Google, Amazon, and other tech giants publicly committed in the early 2020s to achieve carbon neutrality by the mid-2030s. The goals seemed realistic when the primary computing load came from search queries, streaming, and cloud services.

The race for AI dominance has upended their energy balances. Training and inference of large language models require round-the-clock operation of thousands of GPU servers—electricity consumption turned out to be an order of magnitude higher than traditional cloud operations. Companies are not scaling renewable energy sources at the pace their computational capacity is growing.

The Guardian states that Google and Amazon's zero-emission commitments have "become unattainable." A similar story is unfolding outside the US: a flagship Scottish AI project, positioned as exemplary from a green energy perspective, has no realistic plan for transitioning to renewables, according to the publication.

Data centers versus local communities

Energy burden is not only a corporate and climate problem, but also a source of acute social conflict. In the US, residents of regions where large data centers are being built openly declare that facilities are "being imposed against their will" without considering public opinion.

Protest has taken on a political dimension: Americans are initiating recall procedures for local officials who approved AI infrastructure construction. Rising electricity tariffs, network strain, and environmental consequences—this is what residents connect to corporate AI projects. Data centers are no longer perceived as neutral infrastructure and become symbols of unequal distribution of technological progress benefits and costs.

What's happening with Meta

Parallel to the climate crisis, The Guardian reports on Meta's strategic upheavals: the company is "searching frantically" for new business directions. Details are not publicly disclosed, but the very description of the situation as "frantic moves" speaks to serious pressure on the core business model.

Meta finds itself in a particularly difficult position: the advertising model faces competitive pressure, regulatory risks are mounting, and the metaverse bet has yet to justify expectations. The AI bet became a mandatory condition for Meta's competitiveness—and simultaneously a source of new environmental and reputational risks.

Meta is not an exception. The entire Big Tech sector faces an equation with incompatible variables: aggressive AI scaling and ESG compliance cannot be reconciled without fundamentally new energy solutions.

What this means

AI has become a structural climate risk for the tech sector. The faster companies expand computational infrastructure, the further they push back their carbon neutrality promises. This contradiction has already been noticed by investors, regulators, and ordinary citizens—and the latter are beginning to translate discontent into direct political action. The industry needs either fundamentally different energy solutions or honest revision of climate commitments.

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