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.”

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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 & Energy program. “Together, it’s just creating a real near-term crunch on the system.”

Natural gas use spikes as AI soars

Tech companies say they’ve made significant progress on emissions through energy-efficiency measures, buying renewable energy credits and power from sources that don’t emit greenhouse gases and requiring suppliers to reduce their own emissions.

Yet natural gas in 2024 accounted for more than 40% of electricity powering U.S. data centers, while coal supplied 30% globally, the International Energy Agency said. And the trend doesn’t appear to be slowing. Utilities are planning natural gas plants around the country to help supply data centers, while some tech companies plan on-site gas plants built only to feed a data center.

“Companies are scrambling to try to get as much power as they can as quickly as possible,” said Lori Bird, director of the U.S. Energy Program at the World Resources Institute. “It’s a mad rush and a lot of competition for resources.”

Microsoft President Brad Smith told The Associated Press that he is “confident in our ability” to meet the company’s 2030 goal to remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it emits by investing in new sources of carbon-free energy, including nuclear, solar and hydropower.

In Wisconsin, for example, two new natural gas plants to help power a Microsoft data center will be offset by investment in solar elsewhere in the state. Similarly, three natural gas plants will provide electricity to a massive Meta data center in rural Louisiana, while the company invests in solar elsewhere.

Google says it’s investing in wind, hydropower, battery storage and advanced nuclear, though it also relies on natural gas. The company plans to buy electricity from a natural gas plant to be built at the Archer Daniels Midland corn processing plant in Decatur, Illinois, where carbon dioxide emissions would be captured and stored underground.

To help meet clean energy goals, tech companies count on such power purchase agreements and buying renewable energy certificates, a tradeable commodity that supports new and existing sources. But that could get more difficult under proposed changes to how greenhouse gases are reported, which would require that sources are in the same region as a company’s data center and match hours of operation — for example, solar credits could only be applied to daytime operating hours.

Although some new gas plants will replace dirtier coal plants, it takes about 30 years to recover the investment. That means delaying the overall transition to clean and renewable energy at a time when the United Nations Environment Programme warns that high-emitting countries are unlikely to meet their own targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. AI is blamed in part for a 2.4% uptick in U.S. fossil fuel emissions last year, acc