Big tech was embracing clean energy and turning a corner on climate change. Then AI data centers arrived

Six years ago, Google was confident that by 2030 it would power all operations with electricity generated from clean sources, including wind and solar power, and remove as much pollution as it produced. Today it calls those goals a “moonshot.” Microsoft says it’s still aiming to remove more carbon than it creates by 2030 but now describes the effort as “a marathon, not a sprint.”

The race to deploy artificial intelligence is complicating tech companies’ commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from the burning of gas, oil and coal and drive climate change. They say they must be flexible as they rush to build sprawling data centers that can consume more power than entire cities.

“Even if they haven’t officially revised their goals, they are starting to acknowledge that, ‘Yeah, we’re maybe not on track,’” said Patrick Huang, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

Now, Huang said, the companies must use whatever kinds of power they can to stay competitive — and increasingly that is natural gas, which is mostly methane, a planet-warming greenhouse gas.

Tech companies bought record amounts of clean energy in 2024 and 2025, according to the Clean Energy Buyers Association.

But total emissions have gone up over roughly the first five years of their climate commitments, according to companies’ sustainability reports. Google’s emissions jumped nearly 50%. Amazon’s rose by 33%, Microsoft’s more than 23% and Meta’s more than 60%.

Data centers used about 4.6% of total U.S. electricity in 2024, a share that could nearly triple by 2028, according to government estimates. Some analysts predict nationwide electricity use to rise as much as 20% in the next decade, with data centers a big reason.

Meanwhile, a backlog of proposed projects awaiting permission to connect to power grids and efforts by the Trump administration to sideline renewable energy may affect tech companies’ climate goals — and prolong reliance on fossil fuels, experts said.

“Each of these alone could be real challenges,” said Julie McNamara, associate policy director at Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate &........

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