A new analysis of the 60 largest data centers under construction in the US by Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft estimates the sites could produce a cumulative 101.5 million tons of carbon dioxide annually once they’re fully up and running, Financial Times reports [Paywalled]. That’s about 7% of all 2025 US power-sector emissions. Put another way, it’s the equivalent of running 27 coal power plants or putting 24 million more gas-powered cars on the road.
The backlash against America’s data center and artificial intelligence boom has been building for a while now, reaching a fever pitch over water use, land grabs and noise complaints. Recently, environmental activist Erin Brockovich has been mapping out communities affected by data center construction and operations, and polling shows that most Americans don’t want AI factories anywhere near them.
Now, it appears there’s a looming carbon problem to add to the pile.
Big Tech companies appeared publicly committed to cutting emissions just five years ago, making the new findings feel like a notable about-face. Financial Times found that Amazon’s emissions climbed 16% from 2024 to 2025, driven by data center construction and a 34% jump in electricity purchases. Microsoft reported a 25% increase in estimated emissions during the same period, while Google's parent company, Alphabet, reported an 18% year-over-year increase in its emissions figure according to its own adjusted metric.
Researchers point to a mix of causes, from the sheer scale of demand for AI infrastructure to a political environment under the Trump administration that dramatically rolled back climate rules and clean energy tax credits in favor of fossil fuels.
Data center construction has revitalized local activism. In May, Albany, New York, residents gathered at a rally for the AI data center moratorium.
On the grid side, the numbers tell a similar story. US gas-fired energy capacity under development nearly tripled in 2025, with FT's analysts predicting the country’s existing gas-burning infrastructure could grow up to 50% if everything currently planned is built.
Researchers say it’s not that clean energy additions have stalled entirely; rather, utilities are racing to meet data center demand with power that’s available now, and that runs around the clock. Fossil fuels (like gas and coal) fit the bill better than wind or solar until large-scale storage tech catches up.
That’s left the tech giants leaning harder on renewable energy credits to make up the dirty differences between their public commitments and what’s actually happening on the grids. But doing so is expensive and exactly the sort of thing likely to be scaled back over time as profitability pressure mounts.
Utilities, meanwhile, are increasing production to meet the mounting and projected demand, preparing to roll out tens of thousands of megawatts of energy capacity across the US specifically to serve data center infrastructure. Three-quarters of the operators serving these 60 sites are building or planning new gas capacity, and a third of those running coal plants are pushing back retirement dates.
This fresh wave of gas and coal plants occupies a small but rapidly growing portion of the US energy generation mix — trending in the opposite direction to what experts expected only a few years ago. The resulting environmental impacts and grid strains from these energy decisions are stacking up to just one more AI boom cost that nobody outside the tech industry signed up for.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Sunday August 23, @07:10PM (3 children)
Global warming? That thing that the Alt-Wrong insist doesn't exist or isn't really a problem [thelondoneconomic.com]?
Datacenters, for those AI thingymabobs which are going to make all us humans redundant [youtube.com] (and I don't just mean in terms of work)?
All hail the Nerd Reich [thenerdreich.com].
My giddy aunt!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 23, @07:43PM (2 children)
Funny, I did a similar analysis of existing AI data centers' pollution vs commuter vehicle miles...
What I came up with is: for current AI data center power use, it's equivalent to about 11 million commuters on the road.
So, the proposed data centers may triple that... which lands it right about exactly at what the current 33M-ish US work-from-home workers are saving in terms of commuter pollution.
So, who are you more pissed at: the builders of AI data centers, or the Return To Office C-suite jockeys who are proposing an equal increase in pollution AND sucking another 250 hours of life out of the average worker per year "stuck like lemmings in shiny metal boxes."
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by turgid on Sunday August 23, @07:47PM
I just found another fun website, this time about sea level rise [earth.gov]. And another one [nasa.gov].
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by epitaxial on Sunday August 23, @09:29PM
WhyNotBoth.jpg
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 23, @09:14PM (6 children)
We'll just task the Weird Al with fixing pollution, and making the environment cleaner, and resolving all our problems! We just need a prompt engineer!!
Right? Right?? Isn't that what they said back in 2022???
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 23, @09:30PM
They've been using every tool at their disposal to push for every possible goal, unfortunately it's not an organized plan it's investment driven: whoever feels it's worth the investment gets to set their own agenda for how the AI brainwashing gets applied.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by mcgrew on Sunday August 23, @11:18PM
We'll just task the Weird Al with fixing pollution...
What does Mr. Yankovich have to do with... OH! That's a i, not an L. Sans serif sucks for anything longer than a road sign, although Tom is Torn.
Donald Trump is a mixture of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, multiplied by ten.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday August 23, @11:21PM (3 children)
We'll just task the Weird Al with fixing pollution...
Another One Rides the Bus. Someone was saying sans-serif is more readable? Tom is Torn.
Donald Trump is a mixture of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, multiplied by ten.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 24, @02:41AM (2 children)
Tom is Torn works fine for pre-Presbyopic eyes.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 24, @10:59PM (1 child)
So is dark brown type on a black background on my induction cooker controls, but neither have to do with presbyopia; I've had eye surgery. But the lenses aren't all that ages, so does the retina, nerves, and brain. And they're all errors that only youth make. If anybody has a hard time reading it, it's poorly designed.
In S/N's case, we're dealing with code that is older than some of its users and was borrowed from slashdot. I'd hate to have to deal with it.
COBOL forever! Because otherwise you guys will have to rewrite the code.
Donald Trump is a mixture of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, multiplied by ten.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 24, @11:48PM
>errors that only youth make. If anybody has a hard time reading it, it's poorly designed.
I agree, but the Douglas Adams console with the little black light indicating the black button on the black panel has been pressed is all too real in modern products such as: https://www.amazon.com/Marshall-Middleton-II-Bluetooth-Speaker/dp/B0FBHTGL16 [amazon.com]
And the problem with accommodating everybody's vision gets all too clear when dealing with people who are legally blind but still somewhat functional, as you say: there are various ways to go blind and not all are compensated the same way.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday August 23, @09:26PM (5 children)
24M cars worth of co2?
Sooo... how many Libraries of Congress does that translate to?
(Score: 4, Touché) by Gaaark on Sunday August 23, @09:55PM (2 children)
And please... use a car analogy! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 4, Funny) by khallow on Monday August 24, @12:36AM (1 child)
At an overloaded rate of 5000 books per bookmobile (which all have the gas mileage of a typical US passenger car, because why not?) and 170 million books in the Library of Congress, that's 970 Library of Congress-miles. One could move the Library of Congress to Minneapolis!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24, @03:53AM
> One could move the Library of Congress to Minneapolis!
If they were all scanned, we can check back to the data transfer rate of a station wagon filled with tapes or hard drives... https://www.azquotes.com/quote/801590 [azquotes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24, @03:26AM (1 child)
> ... how many Libraries of Congress does that translate to?
Hmmm, how much Carbon is sequestered in all the books in the LoC? Is it appropriate to include other sequestered Carbon, like wooden book cases, wooden desks and doors? Do we have to burn them all to find out how much CO2 will be released? (sarc)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24, @07:19AM
> how much Carbon is sequestered in all the books in the LoC
The amount is irrelevant: The biosphere is a completely separate (natural) carbon cycle. The data centers are releasing (unnatural) fossil carbon. The books are a form of biocarbon and thus not comparable to the fossil carbon released by data centers and combustion engines.
A better question to ask would be how many business flights do those data centers equal.
(Score: 4, Funny) by jb on Monday August 24, @08:38AM
That's nothing compared the amount of hot air already produced by their executives and marketers every single month.