Google's Energy Usage Grows Exponentially

2026-07-03

Ketan Joshi, a climate analyst and advocate, wrote a deep dive / analysis of the Climate Report recently released by Google. The analysis is at the same time comprehensive and easy to read, and also well sourced, so I highly recommend reading it. The short version is that not only google's energy usage is growing at an alarming rate, the rate of growth is also growing. In particular, this growth outpaces Google's investment on renewable energy, showing how it is been used by the tech industry as a distraction to its greed.

Although the report focusing on Google, the report points to evidence that the same applies to other major AI companies such as Microsoft, Amazon (who stopped reporting on their climate impact a few years ago) and Anthropic (who never bothered to report their energy and water usage in the first place). Keep this in mind when considering your stance on the use of LLM's and related tech.

Again, I highly recommend reading the original blog post linked above. Ketan Joshi's other writings about the energy usage of the AI industry are also highly informative (and well sourced), so he is a worthy addition to your RSS rotation.

(Graph by Ketan Joshi, CC-BY-4.0)


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