Google announced a significant achievement in its efforts to address its climate impact, reducing carbon emissions from its data centers by 12% in 2024, despite significantly higher energy usage, according to its new 2025 Environmental Report.
Despite the company’s success in addressing its data center emissions, however, the report also indicated that Google’s overall carbon footprint continued to grow in 2024, driven by a sharp increase in emissions from its supply chain, with Scope 3 emissions rising by more than 20% in the year.
Google’s environmental targets include 2030 goals to reach net zero emissions across its operations and value chain, and in 2020 the company announced a 24/7 CFE ambition, aiming to run its entire business on carbon-free energy by 2030, matching electricity demand with CFE supply every hour of every day, in every region where the company operates.
In the report, however, while Google states that it remains committed to its “climate moonshots,” the company acknowledged that “it’s become clear that achieving them is now more complex and challenging across every level—from local to global,” citing challenges including a slower than needed deployment of carbon-free energy technologies, sharp growth in energy demand driven by AI, policy uncertainty, and some regions still remaining in the early stages of decarbonization.
The report stated:
“These external factors could affect the cost, feasibility, and timeline of our progress—and navigating them requires flexibility. To maintain momentum toward our climate moonshots, we’ll continue to evaluate a broad range of solutions, balancing cost, quality, and the speed of emissions reductions.”
Google’s data center emissions achievement marks a sharp turnaround for the company, following a 37% increase in Scope 2 emissions – which include purchased electricity for data centers and offices – reported in the prior year, and comes despite a 27% increase in electricity demand from its data centers.
The key driver of the decoupling in 2024 of Google’s data centers emissions from their electricity use was the addition of clean energy sources, with 25 contracted projects, representing 2.5 GW of clean energy coming online in the year.
Google’s progress in procuring clean energy suggests that the trend may continue. Since signing its first PPA in 2010, Google has signed more than 170 agreements to purchase over 22 GW of clean energy generation. In 2024 alone, Google signed agreements for more than 8 GW of clean energy generation, the most it has contracted in any year, and representing nearly 4 times its incremental load growth from 2023 to 2024, according to the report. The company also noted that it is pursuing technologies beyond renewables to address its clean energy needs, including enhanced geothermal, advanced nuclear and biomass solutions.
Google also highlighted its efforts to improve data center energy efficiency as a key source of emissions reduction, with the company noting that its data centers now deliver more than six times more computing power per unit of electricity than they did five years ago.
The report also highlighted the key challenges that the company is facing in addressing its broader value chain emissions. Scope 3 emissions account for 73% of Google’s ‘ambition-based’ total carbon footprint, and currently stand at 25% above 2019 levels, after rising by 22% in 2024. Among the key factors driving the increase highlighted by the report is the location of the facilities of suppliers of hardware components such as semiconductors in Asia Pacific, where grids continue to rely largely on fossil fuel-based energy sources.
Google outlined several of the initiatives it is taking to help address its supply chain emissions footprint, including the development of its Energy Assessment Tool, which helps supplier facility managers to identify energy efficiency opportunities across their operations, as well as its Google Clean Energy Addendum (CEA), which asks suppliers to achieve a 100% clean electricity match by the end of 2029 for the electricity they use to manufacture Google products. The company also outlined efforts it is making to help develop clean energy sources in technology supply chain regions, such as its recent investment in BlackRock portfolio company New Green Power (NGP) aimed at supporting the development of 1 GW of renewable energy projects in Taiwan.
In a post announcing the release of the report, Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt said:
“We’ve learned a tremendous amount over the last several years. We now have a better understanding of what it takes to get further down the path toward our climate moonshots — including what’s actually possible in different parts of the world, and how we can apply our resources and unique capabilities to have the greatest possible impact.”
Click here to access the report.
