Data centres: the energy cost of AI – Google sees a 37 per cent rise in electricity demand, Amazon a 16 per cent rise in emissions
The expansion of artificial intelligence is taking an increasingly evident toll on energy consumption.
The race for artificial intelligence is beginning to show a measurable environmental impact in the sustainability reports of major technology groups.
Google and Amazon, two of the leading providers of the cloud infrastructure on which AI models, services and applications run, ended 2025 with rising electricity consumption and emissions, whilst continuing to highlight their investments in renewables, data centre efficiency and cooling technologies.
In its 2026 Environmental Report, Google forecasts a 37 per cent increase in electricity demand for 2025 – the largest annual increase in its history. The company attributes this growth to the expansion of the technical infrastructure required to support AI, cloud computing, Search, YouTube and other digital services. Operational emissions fell by 2 per cent, partly due to the purchase of clean energy, but emissions from the supply chain rose by 25 per cent. This is due not only to the electricity used in data centres, but also to the production of servers, chips, networking equipment and physical infrastructure.
It’s the same story with Amazon. In its 2025 Sustainability Report, the group reports a total carbon footprint of 80.85 million tonnes of CO₂e, up 16 per cent on 2024. Emissions linked to purchased electricity rose by 34 per cent, driven by data centres and the electrification of the logistics network and buildings. Indirect Scope 3 emissions reached 61.74 million tonnes, an increase of 20 per cent.
In short: AI is transforming data centres from digital assets into major consumers of energy, capital, water and advanced components. This is much as local communities and politicians in the US (and increasingly in Italia too https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/data-center-tre-richieste-sfidano-paletti-regionali-lombardia-AICIZ0kD), to the extent that they have even managed to block some projects.
