New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
Big tech counts the energy costs of AI
14/7/2026
News
Electricity demand was up 37% at Google and 35% at Amazon in 2025 compared with 2024, according to the two companies’ annual sustainability reports. Amazon blamed the rise on electricity use in datacentres (its subsidiary Amazon Web Services is a significant data operator), as well as electrification of its delivery network and building electrification.
Google is navigating the tension between hyper-growth and environmental stewardship, according to Google Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt. In a new report, she adds: ‘While we remain deeply committed to sustainability, reaching our climate moonshots is getting harder. It takes energy and resources to support the growing demand for AI that powers businesses and the tools we use every day. Like everyone in our industry, we experienced a surge in electricity demand last year. Our AI infrastructure buildout is accelerating faster than the grid is decarbonising.'
Still, both companies continued to invest in renewables at huge scale. Amazon matched 100% of electricity with renewables in 2025. It achieved 131TWh of carbon-free production. The company counts 375 utility-scale projects globally (264 solar, 109 wind and two nuclear) and 712 renewable energy projects accounting for 41,670MW capacity in total. That sum includes 50 projects amounting to 1,009MW in UK.
Separate Frontier Economics research found Amazon invested more than €14bn in Europe and UK between 2021–2025, amounting to 8.7GW of renewable energy capacity.
In 2025, Google’s clean energy production amounted to 48TWh, or roughly enough energy to power Greece for a year. It also matched 100% of electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases. In 2025 it signed agreements for more than 12GW of 'net-new clean' energy, which includes power purchase agreements, energy storage agreements and agreements for carbon certificates. That figure is about a third of the total amount contracted from 2010–2025, and eight times greater than in 2019.
Supply chain (Scope 3) emissions grew by 25% at Google and 20% at Amazon in 2025 compared with 2024.
Speaking of the increase in supply chain emissions, Brandt adds: 'This increase reflects not only the scale of new AI infrastructure, but also an Asia-Pacific supply chain operating on grids that remain undersupplied with carbon-free energy. This is in part due to land constraints, high construction costs, and policy and regulatory hurdles.' Google did reduce operational emissions (Scope 1 and 2) by 2%.
At Amazon, supply chain emissions account for 76% of its carbon footprint, which reached 80.85mn t CO2e, up from 69.55mn t CO2e in 2024, and 65.28mn t CO2e in 2023. Emissions from direct operations accounted for 19% of carbon footprint and indirect emissions from purchasing electricity represented 5%.
Amazon highlighted a number of sustainability programmes among its supply chain as well as elsewhere, such as the Climate Pledge Fund and Amazon Sustainability Accelerator.
Google calculated that it avoided emissions exceeded 58mn t CO2e in 2025, through machine hardware efficiencies, software and compute efficiencies and clean energy procurement.
Also, it estimates use of nine of its products combined helped reduce emissions by 41mn t CO2e (Google Earth, Nest thermostats, Solar API, Ignite Energy Access, fuel-efficient routing, Green Light, alternative route suggestions, Contrails, and Waymo).
