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Google Undercounts Its Carbon Emissions Despite ‘Net Zero’ Goal For 2030

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Back in 2021, Google set the goal of having net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, however, within the past four years they’ve been using more energy, especially with the company’s investment in artificial intelligence which requires a large amount of energy. 

In Google’s latest sustainability report, the company claimed its carbon emissions were increased by 51% between 2019 and 2024. However, in another report from non-profit advocacy group Kairos Fellowship, they claimed Google’s carbon emissions actually increased by 65% in that five year period. 

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Between 2010, when Google first made their greenhouse gas emissions public, and 2024, their total emissions increased by 1,515%, according to the report from Kairos. Between 2023 and 2024, Google saw its biggest increase within a one-year period with an increase of 26%. 

“Google’s own data makes it clear: the corporation is contributing to the acceleration of climate catastrophe, and the metrics that matter – how many emissions they emit, how much water they use, and how fast these trends are accelerating – are headed in the wrong direction for us and the planet,” said Nicole Sugerman, a campaign manager at Kairos Fellowship.

After the report from Kairos was published, Google released a statement questioning their findings. 

“The analysis by the Kairos Fellowship distorts the facts. Our carbon emissions are calculated according to the widely used Greenhouse Gas Protocol and assured by a third party. Our carbon reduction ambition has been validated by the leading industry body, the Science Based Targets initiative,” said a spokesperson, Maggie Shiels.

The authors of the Kairos report cited multiple factors as to why their report found different numbers than Google, including the use of a different metric for calculating the total emissions released. Google uses market-based emissions while Kairos uses location-based emissions. 

Location-based emissions are the average emissions the company produces from its use of local power grids. Market-based emissions include energy that the company has purchased in order to offset their total emissions, according to reports from the Guardian. 

“[Location-based emissions] represents a company’s ‘real’ grid emissions,” said Franz Ressel, the lead researcher and report co-author. 

“Market-based emissions are a corporate-friendly metric that obscures a polluter’s actual impact on the environment. It allows companies to pollute in one place, and try to ‘offset’ those emissions by purchasing energy contracts in another place.”

The energy that Google needed to power its data centers alone increased by 820% since 2010, which will likely increase further as the company releases and utilizes more AI products. 

“In absolute terms, the increase was 6.8 TWh, or the equivalent of Google adding the entire state of Alaska’s energy use in one year to their previous use,” said Sugerman.

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“It’s not sustainable to keep building at the rate [Google is] building because they need to scale their compute within planetary limits,” said Sugerman. 

“We do not have enough green energy to serve the needs of Google and certainly not the needs of Google and the rest of us.”

Google’s sustainability report stated that their water withdrawal increased 27% between 2023 and 2024 to 11 billion gallons of water. 

“[That is] enough to supply the potable water needs for the 2.5 million people and 5,500 industrial users in Boston and its suburbs for 55 days,” the Kairos report stated. 

Beyond just Google, all the major tech companies have been publicly pressured to utilize clean energy to grow their data centers. In fact, this week multiple organizations such as the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, League of Conservation Voters, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club, published an open letter in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Times to the CEOs of Google, Amazon and Microsoft to “commit to no new gas and zero delayed coal plant retirements to power your data centers.”

“In just the last two years alone, your companies have built data centers throughout the United States capable of consuming more electricity than four million American homes,” the letter stated. 

“Within five years, your data centers alone will use more electricity than 22 million households, rivaling the consumption of multiple mid-size states.”

The Kairos report has accused Google of relying “heavily on speculative technologies, particularly nuclear power,” as a means of achieving its goal of net zero emissions by 2030. 

“Google’s emphasis on nuclear energy as a clean energy ‘solution’ is particularly concerning, given the growing consensus among both scientists and business experts that their successful deployment on scale, if it is to ever occur, cannot be achieved in the near or mid-term future,” the report said.

The Kairos report concluded by alleging that Google presents its data in a misleading way. While they stated that they have improved their energy efficiency by citing only efficiency numbers rather than the absolute ones. 

“Since 2010, the company’s total energy consumption has increased 1,282%,” the report stated.

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New Airport Terminal In Florence Will Have A Vineyard On Its Roof, Aiding New Sustainability Efforts

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New York-based firm Rafael Viñoly Architects announced back in January that it will be adding a new international terminal at the Aeroporto Amerigo Vespucci in Florence that will have a functioning vineyard on its roof as a “new landmark for the city’s sustainable future.”

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hempcrete

The Rise Of Hemp As An Environmentally Friendly Building Material For Housing 

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Hemp, the non-psychoactive variant of cannabis, has been often used in holistic medicine and as a source for textiles and fabrics. Now, the natural material is being utilized as an environmentally friendly and economically friendly alternative to concrete for building.

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olympics

2024 Paris Olympics Planning On Keeping Athletes Cool Without Air Conditioning 

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According to reports, the Paris Olympics is currently trying to plan a way to keep the athletes of the 2024 Games cool without the use of air conditioning. 

According to organizers, as reported by AP, the current plan is to use a water-cooling system under the Athletes Village. They compared it to the current system used for the Louvre Museum, which helped keep the space cool during record-breaking heat waves last year. 

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Organizers are working to make an air conditioner-less cooling system work as a means of cutting the carbon footprint of the Paris Games overall. The current goal is to cut the carbon footprint by half and put on the most sustainable Olympic Games in history. 

By installing special technology that utilizes natural resources to keep everyone cool, even if a heat wave occurs, is how organizers plan to accomplish this goal. 

“I want the Paris Games to be exemplary from an environmental point of view,” said Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

Outside of the Olympics, Mayor Hidalgo has had the plan to tackle climate change through multiple action plans that will, ideally, reduce Paris’ greenhouse gas emissions and become carbon neutral by 2050.

“Compared to a conventional project, the carbon impact will be reduced by 45% for the Athletes Village during the construction phase and over the entire Olympic cycle,” she said.

Between July to September 2024, the Athletes Village in Paris will host around 15,600 athletes and sports officials, as well as 9,000 athletes and teams during the Paralympics. 

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Organizers have been studying heatwave patterns block by block in the Athletes Village to prepare for next years Games. Their methods include simulations where heatwave conditions are recreated to see how successful their cooling system will be at combating high levels of heat. 

“The geothermal energy system will ensure that the temperature in the athlete apartments in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb does not rise above 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) at night, including during a potential a heat wave,” said Laurent Michaud, the director of the Olympic and Paralympic Villages.

He continued to explain that “organizers have conducted tests in rooms that are located on the highest floors of the residences and are facing south and exposed to direct sun on two sides. [We’ve] also considered directions of winds in the region and the water temperature in the Seine. [We also] have worked closely with France’s national weather agency to develop temperature forecasts.”

“Despite outdoor temperatures reaching 41 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit), we had temperatures at 28 degrees (82 degrees Fahrenheit) in most of these rooms. In other rooms, we clearly had lower temperatures,” Michaud told The Associated Press. 

“In addition to the underfloor cooling, the insulation built into the buildings will enable residents to keep the cold obtained during the night throughout the day,” Michaud said. 

Surfer at Beach

How Climate Change is Affecting the Australian Summer

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The Australian summer is something that many around the world long to experience. Who would not want to spend the long warm days on the beach, surfing some of the world’s greatest waves while soaking up some sun? Or maybe staying at home and lounging around the pool in the backyard, inviting friends and family over for a barbecue. Such thoughts bring feelings of happiness and relaxation.

But the summer of the last few years has brought another feeling to the mix: fear. Due to the increasing number of bushfires – many close to homes, businesses, retailers and schools – residents, and therefore vacationers and tourists, are increasingly worrying about the threat of damage to their properties and lives.

2019 has seen higher numbers of bush fires than in previous years, with much of the country now living with a haze of smoke even if they are not directly affected by the fires. This last week has seen the town of Batemans Bay in New South Wales having to evacuate to the beach while the fires rip through their homes while many campgrounds around the continent have closed for the summer due to the “code red” conditions.

Australia – as well as many other countries across the world – has seen its summers increase in temperatures over the years, however the link between the current conditions as well as anthropogenic climate change is immense.

So far over 5 million hectares of land have been lost. Compare this to the estimated 906,000 hectares that were lost in the Amazon Rainforest earlier in the year. It is staggering that there has not been more coverage – or more help provided from the rest of the world.

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And it is not just land that has been devastated. So far there have been eighteen deaths, including firefighters, as well as the enormous amount of wildlife that has been lost. Figures currently estimate there have been around 500 million animals that have died with 30 percent of the koala population wiped out.

Australia sees higher temperatures in January and February, so these statistics are only going to get worse causing many to call on the government for more support.

However, while Australia sees bushfires every year making it the continent most likely to burn, what has made this year so bad? As with all fires, bushfires need specific resources to grow – dry fuel, weather conditions and ignition. And thanks to the effects climate change is having on the weather and fuel, the fires are becoming bigger and occur more often and for longer.

Scientists have been warning us that the world is getting warmer each year, with Australia increasing in temperature by one degree Celsius throughout the last 100 years, and this has caused a change in the intensity, as well as the frequency, of their heat waves.

The increase in the temperatures has caused an increase in evaporation, drying the fuel and soil load. Over ten years ago the IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – came to the conclusion that the continuing anthropogenic climate change would increase how often Australia would experience fires. They also predicted that these fires would increase in intensity.

With the rising temperatures continuing to dry out the environment, they can be reduced by precipitation or by increasing the vegetation, which can improve humidity.

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However Australia’s southern states have seen a considerable decrease in rainfall, with the southwest seeing a decrease of nearly twenty per cent in the last forty years. The southeast has also seen a decrease of eleven percent of rainfall since the 1990s.

While there are many factors contributing to the drop in rainfall the positive trend in the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is one of the biggest. The change has seen the westerly winds across the Southern Ocean to move south towards Antarctica, meaning the rain-bearing cold fronts are bypassing southern Australia.

Scientists have also blamed the trend of anthropogenic climate change for increasing the trend in the SAM.

These changes have played a significant role in why the 2019-2020 summer has been so intense, however southeast Australia has been suffering from a drought for the last three years having not seen any winter rain since 2017, which has not happened in Australia’s history before – not even when they experienced their ten year droughts including the Millennium Drought.

And with large areas of vegetation unable to survive the wet rain forests are drying out, meaning areas that would not normally see fires are starting to burn.

This year also saw one of the most severe positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) events which saw the cold sea-surface temperatures putting a halt to one of the biggest resources of moisture for Australia. When these events happen Australia usually experiences a longer fire season and the positive IOD events are another aspect of global warming as they are occurring more often.

With many Australians accusing their government of not doing enough to stop climate change – and many not even acknowledging that it is an issue – it is hard to see that these fires will start to reduce. And that is not good for anyone anywhere.

Climate

Most Countries Have Failed to Meet Climate Goals, U.N. Reports

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In a report that the New York Times describes as “bleak,” the United Nations has warned that the world is headed towards climate catastrophes, as the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, have expanded their carbon footprint last year. Even countries that have pledged to substantially reduce carbon emissions have failed to do so to an extent that would prevent Earth’s temperature from increasing by 2 degrees celsius, a change that scientists around the world argue would have disastrous consequences on civilization and the nature of life on the planet. As such, the report urges the world’s 20 richest countries, including the world’s richest country, the United States, to take immediate and profound action to cut greenhouse gas emissions and switch to renewable energy. This is a tall order, particularly considering the fact that the US is currently in the process of withdrawing from the Paris accord and does not officially recognize the existence of climate change.

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According to the annual assessment, global greenhouse emissions have increased by 1.5 percent every year this decade, a trend which must be reversed in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. If this change is not made promptly, the U.N. predicts that increasingly intense droughts, stronger storms, and widespread food insecurity can be expected. Another organization, the World Meteorological Organization, separately produced a report with similar findings, which found a steady increase in the rate of man-made CO2 emissions since the start of the nineteenth century. 

While nearly every country in the world pledged to reduce carbon emissions drastically four years ago under the Paris Agreement, many countries, including some of the world’s greatest offenders, have so far failed to meet their own goals. Even if every country fulfills the goals they set for themselves as part of the agreement, however, global temperatures are still predicted to increase by 3.2 degrees Celsius, endangering billions of people and presenting potentially apocalyptic consequences in the long term. As such, the U.N.’s call for immediate drastic action is at once dire and warranted, given the reality of the problem as exposed by global scientific consensus.

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While the findings of the most recent U.N. report, among others, seem bleak, there is reason for optimism in the fact that technologies to reduce emissions drastically already exist, but require extensive political willpower to deploy at the necessary scale. In order to meet universally agreed-upon climate targets, the world will have to replace the combustion of fossil fuels, in particular coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, with renewable forms of energy like solar and wind. Furthermore, people will need to move away from gas-powered vehicles, replacing them either with public transportation infrastructure or electric cars. And other technologies, such as carbon-recapture systems, are currently in development and may one day reverse some of the consequences of carbon emissions.

However, many countries are not taking the necessary steps to prevent catastrophe in the UN’s eyes. Canada, for instance, has pledged to reduce carbon emissions within their own borders but has expanded fossil-fuel production for sale in other countries, and sales of inefficient gas-powered S.U.V.s around the world have increased. That being said, things are moving in the right direction, albeit very slowly. Renewable energy is expanding rapidly, though not nearly as fast as needed, and coal use is declining due to both climate concerns and economic factors. And the political action necessary to persuade world leaders to combat climate change more aggressively is underway, as millions of young people around the world have taken to the streets to demand change. Though climate change skeptics will tell you otherwise otherwise, this political action, in addition to investments and deployments of climate-friendly technologies, has the potential to determine the fate of civilization itself.

Climate Change Protest

TIME Special Report Emphasizes Threat of Climate Change

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TIME magazine this week took the unusual step of devoting an entire issue to the subject of climate change, with every story printed in the magazine offering a different take on the subject. The issue, entitled “2050: The Fight for Earth,” recognizes the 30th anniversary of when TIME recognized the endangered Earth instead of their usual person of the year in 1989. The climate-focused edition of the magazine imagines a planet roughly thirty years in the future, exploring various outcomes depending on humanity’s reaction to the crisis through interviews with activists, celebrities, and experts. The editors of TIME suggest that while humanity has woken up to the reality of the crisis, we are ill-equipped to handle it, and hope that devoting an issue to the subject will prompt further discussion and action about reducing the causes of climate change and adapting to its effects.

TIME hopes to bring further attention to the subject with the use of digital media. The magazine’s website hosts a page devoted to the issue, offering links to the stories present in the issue and a link to download an app which grants smartphone users an immersive 3D journey through the Amazon rainforest, including areas which have been destroyed by wildfires, narrated by Jane Goodall. Called TIME Immersive, the app includes a new section devoted to visualizing the Amazon rainforest, and uses augmented reality technology to superimpose models of the rainforest onto real-world environments, allowing the user to view the models from different angles in real-time. As the user explores these virtual environments, Jane Goodall describes the extent and scope of environmental destruction, its various causes, and potential solutions. As the app is free and available for both iOS and Android, it’s worth checking out.

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In one of the issue’s featured articles, Bill McKibben, an author and environmental expert, imagines a future in which humanity has survived the worst effects of climate change, but life on Earth is dramatically different. In the article, McKibben predicts that while humanity has witnessed the destruction of forests in California due to wildfires and other extreme weather events, engineers have succeeded in developing cheap renewable energy in the form of solar panels and wind turbines, which have reduced carbon emissions dramatically. McKibben imagines that the threat of climate change becomes a decisive factor in ensuring a victory for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, especially among women, who are disproportionately displaced by climate change worldwide, and young people, who turn out to vote in record numbers. This candidate, McKibben asserts, removes the filibuster in order to pass sweeping, unprecedented legislation to end subsidies for oil and gas companies, tax carbon emissions, and invest in green energy.

The cost of adapting to the effects of climate change is massive

Despite this optimistic view, however, McKibben asserts that the worst effects of delaying action on climate change for several decades are unavoidable and yet to come, and the runaway effect will accelerate global warming and sea level rise. As a result, extreme weather events continue to displace millions of people, creating an unprecedented humanitarian and political crisis, and ancient carcasses will be released from melting ice sheets, releasing germs and diseases once thought extinct. The cost of adapting to the effects of climate change, which includes constructing massive seawalls to deal with sea level rise and building infrastructure to protect against hurricanes and other weather events, is massive, and the overall mood of humanity is changed: though we are thankful we survived climate change, we have a different outlook on man’s dominion over nature and the threat of natural forces.

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Another climate activist, Andrew Blum, gives a different take. Blum, a journalist, describes the various technological innovations that will be necessary for tackling the climate crisis. While continuing to invest in solar and wind is necessary, Blum argues that other approaches must be explored as well. Improving the electricity grid to allow for more interconnection and storage of energy is essential, Blum claims, as is innovating with safer and cleaner nuclear energy options and managing carbon in the atmosphere with sequestration.

As the major stories featured in this week’s issue are available for free online, they are worth taking a look at. TIME’s dedication of an entire issue to climate change reflects the urgency and importance of the problem; and as the climate crisis continues, more and more outlets are likely to follow suit.