Datacentres Drive Big Tech Emissions to a Third of France's
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- Microsoft, Amazon, and Google collectively emitted 119m mTCO₂e in the fiscal year ending March 2026 — about a third of France's emissions — up from roughly 101m mTCO₂e the prior year, equivalent to Czechia's 2024 emissions.
- Microsoft reported a 25% emissions increase to 20m mTCO₂e, driven "primarily by the expansion of our datacentre infrastructure."
- Google said emissions rose 18% due to supply chain expansion tied to rapid business growth, while claiming its AI systems helped reduce emissions elsewhere by 41m tonnes of CO2 last year.
- Amazon reported a 16% overall emissions increase and 20% rise in supply chain emissions, yet framed the trend as "making progress" toward its 2040 net zero goal.
- The three companies are projected to spend $765bn (£570bn) this year, mostly on AI datacentres, with JLL forecasting roughly 1,200 datacentres to be built globally by 2030.
- Uptime Institute estimates that big datacentre projects announced last year would consume 1.3% of global electricity — nearly doubling current datacentre demand — while UC Riverside professor Shaolei Ren flagged a possible shortage of carbon credits in global markets.
Why it matters: The surge breaks what had been flatlined emissions for Microsoft and directly contradicts net-zero pledges from all three companies. With $765bn in AI datacentre spending projected this year and 1,200 new facilities planned globally, the climate cost of cloud and AI growth is now being borne by the same companies marketing "sustainable" clouds to enterprises outsourcing their own digital footprints.
