As major tech giants engage in an intense race to build artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, Google saw its greenhouse gas emissions surge by the largest margin in its history last year, with electricity and water consumption also reaching all-time highs.
According to U.S. media outlets including Axios, Google revealed in its 2026 Environmental Report, released on June 30 (local time), that its total greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 reached 14.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e), an 18% increase from the previous year.
This marks the highest growth rate since Google began publishing its annual environmental reports in 2016, primarily driven by increased emissions from hardware manufacturing, including semiconductor chips and servers, as well as its supply chain, which is centered in the Asia-Pacific region.
Electricity demand rose by 27% in 2024 and climbed another 37% in 2025, reaching a level 3.5 times higher than that of 2019.
Water consumption increased by 34% to reach 10.9 billion gallons (approximately 41.26 billion liters).
This is more than double the level recorded in 2021, with data centers accounting for the majority of the increase.
Due to the rapid growth of AI, Google has shifted its climate goal benchmark from an absolute reduction in total emissions to ensuring that the rate of emissions growth does not outpace the company's business growth.
Amid the sharp rise in indicators such as greenhouse gas emissions, electricity demand, and water consumption, Google emphasized in the report that it is making efforts to prevent these figures from increasing even more rapidly.
Google claimed that without its active carbon reduction initiatives, its emissions would have been five times higher than they are now, asserting that it avoided more than 58 million tCO₂e of emissions in 2025 alone through improvements in hardware efficiency and the purchase of clean energy.
Furthermore, Google stated in the report, "This rapid expansion of energy demand is a reality we must actively manage," adding, "We will ensure that the growth of AI does not become an excuse to lower our environmental standards."
According to Axios, while annual climate reports from major tech companies have traditionally been a venue to showcase achievements in clean energy use and climate change response, the unprecedented infrastructure expansion fueled by the AI boom is revealing the gap between the ambitious climate goals these companies have set and the reality on the ground.