When major technology companies set climate goals years ago, several expressed confidence that clean power could scale with their growth. Now, as artificial intelligence increases the electricity needs of data centers, the Associated Press reports that the firms are adjusting both expectations and language around timelines. The shift comes even as companies say they are pursuing emissions reductions through efficiency upgrades, clean-energy procurement and rules that require suppliers to reduce their own emissions.
The article says the biggest tension is the mismatch between climate commitments and power demand: data centers can consume power at a scale that companies say strains grid capacity. It points to how Google previously looked to clean electricity expansion to meet its targets, while some companies now describe their efforts with less certainty or more emphasis on a longer path. Analysts argue that the need to secure electricity quickly can pull new capacity development toward natural gas, which is mostly methane and is a planet-warming greenhouse gas.
Patrick Huang, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said companies are starting to acknowledge that they may not be on track. Huang also said companies must use whatever kinds of power they can to stay competitive, and that increasingly that means natural gas. In the AP account, Huang’s comments reflect a broader market reality: utilities and developers plan generation to meet data-center loads, even as the clean energy transition is still underway.
Julie McNamara, an associate policy director at Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate & Energy program, described the operational problem as both urgent and systemic. McNamara said each challenge alone could be “real,” and that together they are “just creating a real near-term crunch on the system.” In the AP reporting, she linked that crunch to fossil-fuel dependence—particularly because electricity demand is rising fast enough that clean energy buildouts and grid connections may not keep pace in the near term.
The pressure shows up in the numbers companies have reported about their emissions trajectories. The AP report says sustainability reports show emissions have gone up over roughly the first five years of their climate commitments, with Google emissions jumping nearly 50%, Amazon’s rising by 33%, Microsoft’s increasing by more than 23% and Meta’s more than 60%. The story describes the companies’ greenhouse gas totals as driven by emissions from burning gas, oil and coal, which contribute to climate change.
The electricity demand itself is a core driver of the dispute. The AP analysis cites government estimates saying data centers used about 4.6% of total U.S. electricity in 2024, a share that could nearly triple by 2028. It also describes analysts predicting nationwide electricity use could rise as much as 20% over the next decade, with data centers a major reason. Against that backdrop, the AP says utilities are planning natural gas plants around the country to supply data centers, and that some tech companies are planning on-site gas plants built only to feed a data center.
Lori Bird, director of the U.S. Energy Program at the World Resources Institute, said companies are scrambling to secure electricity quickly and described it as competitive. “It’s a mad rush and a lot of competition for resources,” Bird told the AP. The AP report also points to the International Energy Agency’s assessment that in 2024, natural gas accounted for more than 40% of electricity powering U.S. data centers, while coal supplied 30% globally.
Big tech, meanwhile, argues that it still expects to meet its carbon-removal or emissions-reduction targets by 2030, but the AP describes shifting framing. 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. The AP report also describes Microsoft offsetting new natural gas capacity planned for a Wisconsin data center with investment in solar elsewhere in the state.
For Google, the AP report says it is investing in wind, hydropower, battery storage and advanced nuclear but also relies on natural gas. It says Google 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. The AP story also says companies count on power purchase agreements and renewable energy certificates, but that proposed changes to how greenhouse gases are reported could make that approach harder, including by requiring sources to be in the same region as a company’s data center and to match hours of operation.
The AP report describes policy and infrastructure constraints that could compound the problem. It says a backlog of proposed projects awaiting permission to connect to power grids, along with efforts by the Trump administration to sideline renewable energy, may affect tech companies’ climate goals and could prolong reliance on fossil fuels. It also says a study by the Rhodium Group links artificial intelligence in part to a 2.4% uptick in U.S. fossil fuel emissions last year, and that the United Nations Environment Programme has warned high-emitting countries are unlikely to meet their own emissions targets.
In the political context, the AP report says electricity supply challenges existed even before President Donald Trump took office and moved against renewables. It describes canceled grants and permits for solar and wind projects, eliminated tax breaks for renewable energy that advocates say can be built faster and less expensively than natural gas or nuclear, and an order that certain coal-fired power plants slated for retirement keep running. Rich Powell, chief executive officer of the Clean Energy Buyers Association, told the AP that his group has been “very, very clear” to the administration and Congress that it wants energy on a “level playing field,” warning that policy changes could put “energy affordability and energy reliability” at risk.
The AP report also includes a tech industry argument that could shape expectations. Josh Parker, sustainability chief for chipmaker Nvidia, said artificial intelligence eventually will reduce electricity use because it is more efficient than traditional computing, and he warned that curtailing energy development could cause the U.S. to fall behind on artificial intelligence. Jay Dietrich, who researches AI sustainability for the Uptime Institute and formerly led emissions goal-setting at IBM, told the AP that tech companies in 2020 could not project current energy needs because much of the equipment used to train machine-learning models was only being introduced. Dietrich said by 2023, companies had “a pretty good idea things were going to get a lot more exciting,” and that numbers would grow quickly.
Even with the argument that companies can continue to meet climate goals, McNamara said data-center power demand is changing the stakes in real time. She told the AP that the surge in electricity demand from data centers turned a challenge into an “outright crisis,” and that tech companies are allowing an “enormous increase in fossil fuel dependence” under their watch. She added, “There are no two ways about it.”