AI Set to Extend Fossil Fuel Dominance
Oracle’s $165 Billion Data Center Plan Hits a Gas Pipeline Delay Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and… AI's energy footprint is out of control.
Hyperscalers are building out data centers faster than the energy industry can keep up with, pushing for the rapid buildout of any form of energy we have at our disposal, clean or dirty.
Silicon Valley's leadership in the decarbonization movement and bold net-zero pledges are a thing of the past.
But a new study warns that the biggest issue with AI's carbon footprint may not even be its own energy consumption, but rather the industries it is used to support and expand.
Instead of reducing emissions, Big Tech is seeing its carbon footprint expand by double-digit rates driven almost entirely by the AI boom.
According to official company figures, the total carbon emissions ofGoogleandMicrosofteach skyrocketed by 25% year-over-year from 2025 to 2026, while Amazon's increased by16%.
Altogether, in the last fiscal year, these three companies emitted as much carbon dioxide as a third of France, at 19 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
And those numbers are set to keep climbing in the coming years.
Amazon made headlines across the globe this week when it was revealed that the firm is investing in a large-scale natural-gas-burning power plant as part of a massive data center development in South Texas that is set to be thesingle biggest-emitting power plant in the country.
If built to currently planned specifications, the facility would be permitted to release 33 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.
Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview, a company thatmonitors the emissionsof Big Tech companies' data center projects, told the New York Times that the planned Amazon power plant should not be viewed as a one-off, but rather that it “could be a foreshadowing of what's to come.” The result of this trend is going to be a complete derailment of Big Tech's climate pledges and a devastating blow for global progress on decarbonization goals.
And while some AI defenders point out that large language models will also be used to make a huge range of systems and sectors more energy efficient, a newpaperpublished NPJ Climate Action, a publication from the highly respected scientific journal Nature, suggests that at the end of the day, AI integration is going to expand global emissions far more than it reduces them, and not by a small margin.
| Product | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Brent Crude | $102.14/bbl | +0.34% |
| WTI Crude | $96.90/bbl | +0.21% |
| EN590 Diesel | $846/MT | +0.18% |
| Jet Fuel A-1 | $1090/MT | +0.55% |
| Mazut M100 | $450/MT | -0.15% |
| Bitumen 60/70 | $470/MT | +0.08% |
| Sulphur Gran 99.5% | $470/MT | -0.44% |
| Urea 46% Gran | $650/MT | +1.12% |
| NPK 16-16-16 | $460/MT | -0.28% |
| Nat Gas TTF | $15.42/MMBtu | +0.92% |
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