(Bloomberg) — Weeks after ChatGPT was unleashed on the world in November 2022, sustainability executives at\u00a0Microsoft Corp. realized they had a big problem.<\/p>\n
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On the tech giant\u2019s 500-acre campus in Redmond, Washington, teams began holding regular \u201ctriage\u201d meetings to confront serious questions posed by the artificial intelligence boom: Where would the company find the gigawatts \u2014\u00a0just one gigawatt can power nearly 750,000 US homes \u2014 needed for data centers? And how could Microsoft possibly secure that extra energy while still making progress toward a long-standing goal of going carbon-negative?<\/p>\n
The AI discussions were \u201cinteresting and terrifying all at the same time,\u201d said Brian Janous, who served until August 2023 as Microsoft\u2019s vice president of energy. Microsoft and other major tech companies, he said, had to \u201clook at the climate commitments they set and say, \u2018Can I still do this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Google and Amazon employees hold signs outside Amazon\u2019s headquarters during a climate strike in Seattle in 2019.Photographer: Chloe Collyer\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n
Nearly three years later, Microsoft and rivals including Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google are still struggling to answer that question. On one hand, they\u2019re trying to obtain every electron possible to power their trillion-dollar bet on AI. On the other, they’re trying to stay true to a goal of achieving net-zero\u00a0carbon emissions by 2040 or sooner.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no question that the current push to develop AI infrastructure is putting a strain on the climate commitments of the big tech companies, all of which were made prior to the advent of AI,\u201d Janous said in an interview.\u00a0After leaving Microsoft, he co-founded Cloverleaf Infrastructure, which partners with utilities to develop clean-powered sites that supply the largest data-center providers.<\/p>\n
US President\u00a0Donald Trump isn\u2019t making this challenge any easier. Since taking office, he\u2019s slashed federal funding for green initiatives, such as wind and solar, and signaled his support for powering AI with generators that use fossil fuels, including aging coal-fired plants. Wary of irritating their biggest ally in Washington, tech leaders so far have refrained from publicly challenging the president over his campaign against renewables.<\/p>\n
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For now, the so-called hyperscalers continue to buy clean energy at a record pace, with Meta, Amazon, Google and Microsoft ranking as the biggest corporate signers of power purchase agreements with renewable suppliers. Together they accounted for 9.6\u00a0gigawatts of US clean energy purchases in the first half of 2025, amounting to 40% of the global total, according to the latest BloombergNEF data.<\/p>\n
That number falls woefully short of the 362 gigawatts of additional power the industry is projected to need worldwide by 2035\u00a0to sustain its growing data center fleet, according to BNEF. With enormous pressure from Wall Street to deliver on AI investments, companies can\u2019t afford to let energy be a limiting factor and are pursuing an all-of-the-above strategy on electricity sources.<\/p>\n
AI\u2019s impact is already showing up in sustainability reports. Meta, Google, Amazon\u00a0 and Microsoft disclosed that their carbon emissions went up 64%, 51%, 33% and 23% respectively in their latest climate filings compared to their benchmarks from before ChatGPT\u2019s release. Microsoft explicitly blamed \u201cgrowth-related factors such as AI and cloud expansion.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Microsoft data center under construction in Aldie, Virginia, in October.Photographer: Lexi Critchett\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n
Inside Microsoft, tension between longstanding climate pledges and the insatiable energy needs of AI left the sustainability teams mired in uncertainty, according to two former managers who left the company earlier this year. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the former managers described Microsoft\u2019s climate priorities as constantly shifting in the face of its appetite for electricity.<\/p>\n
A key source of strain was over concerns that Microsoft risked a public backlash if it appeared to be abandoning its climate goals in any way, creating a \u201csuffocating level of control\u201d\u00a0that paralyzed staff, one of the former managers said. Reports were dissected to ensure they adhered to an evolving company line, with individual words in memos and other documents turning into landmines that could \u201cblow up\u201d conversations, the person said.<\/p>\n
Adding to the stress, the other former manager said, were industry-wide workforce reductions in 2023 that cut nearly 200,000 jobs, which destabilized climate teams as they worked on one of the toughest problems in tech: how to procure enough energy, sustainably.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Microsoft\u2019s chief sustainability officer, Melanie Nakagawa, said the company \u201cremains committed to meeting our climate goals of being carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030 while protecting ecosystems. As we learn and adapt, we\u2019re continuing to expand our global clean energy portfolio, building markets by investing in new climate technology solutions, and empowering others with technology to build a more sustainable future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biggest Bottleneck<\/p>\n
On a recent podcast, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said the supply of power, rather than the availability of semiconductors, accounted for the biggest bottleneck in data center capacity. By some estimates, the energy needs of existing and planned AI infrastructure in the US can\u2019t be met with current supply.<\/p>\n
Dave Stangis, a senior executive at Apollo Global Management who has led the firm\u2019s sustainability strategy for the past four years, said last month that the amount of energy required to power AI data centers is so vast that meeting that need may be more than a lifetime away.<\/p>\n
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As a result, big tech companies have been buying more nuclear and geothermal energy to satisfy the needs of their expanding AI infrastructure, according to BNEF data. At the same time, haunted by the risk of losing power for even a minute and driven by the desire to win the AI race, some companies are also exploring what\u2019s known as behind-the-meter power, where a generation plant sits in the data center\u2019s backyard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want a new resource, something that\u2019s not already on the grid, that\u2019s not already spoken for,\u201d said Elaine Walsh, who leads the power group for the law firm Baker Botts. She added that \u201calmost all\u201d of the new development work she does is for gas power.<\/p>\n
Meta\u2019s Hyperion Project<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the strategy Meta is using as it attempts to get its massive data center in Louisiana up and running as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n
The project, dubbed Hyperion, is a 4 million-square-foot complex on 2,250 acres in rural Louisiana that\u2019s expected to consume as much as five gigawatts of electricity. This summer, Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg posted a graphic depicting Hyperion engulfing most of Manhattan \u2014 an image that Trump later displayed at a White House Cabinet meeting, saying the facility would cost $50 billion.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump holds a graphic comparing the size of Meta’s new \u201cHyperion\u201d data center in rural Louisiana to Manhattan during a cabinet meeting at the White House in August.Photographer: Aaron Schwartz\/CNP\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n
To support the Meta site, Entergy Corp. received regulatory approval in August to construct three gas plants capable of producing about 2.3 gigawatts. Last month, in addition to those three plants, the utility applied to tie new natural gas generation to the grid in Louisiana to meet increasing demand from data centers and industrial projects, including from Meta and other hyperscalers.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the moment that the Richland Parish data center came onto the picture, we\u2019ve been planning for and executing to secure clean energy to support that site,\u201d Urvi Parekh, Meta\u2019s head of global energy, said in an interview. \u201cWhat we measure is what is the carbon intensity of the electricity that is serving our data center and then working through the greenhouse gas protocol rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meta also said in a statement that it plans to add enough clean and renewable energy to match the total electricity use at Richland. To do so, the company said it\u2019s working with Entergy to bring 1.5 gigawatts of renewable energy to the Louisiana\u00a0grid and that it\u2019s launched other clean and renewable energy projects across the state, including three focused on solar.<\/p>\n
Companies like Meta often buy carbon offsets and renewable energy certificates to balance the emissions tied to their operations, but both of those practices have been decried over the years for varying reasons.\u00a0Offsets can be notoriously difficult to verify, and\u00a0renewable energy certificates have been assailed for failing to achieve real emissions reduction\u00a0or drive renewable energy generation.<\/p>\n
Meta has maintained that the majority of its renewable energy portfolio actually comes in the form of real, long-term contracts such as power purchase agreements and that \u201conly a small percentage\u201d \u2014 less than 5% of its reported renewable energy purchases in 2023, for example \u2014\u00a0were tied to short-term, unbundled renewable energy certificates.<\/p>\n
Nuclear Option<\/p>\n
Meta\u2019s use of gas to power its new data center while still purchasing huge amounts of clean energy reflects a balancing act across the industry. Last month, Google announced a first-of-its kind agreement to buy almost all of the electricity from a gas plant in Illinois while supplying the facility with carbon capture and storage equipment.<\/p>\n
The main turbine hall inside Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which Constellation Energy Corp. is investing $1.6 billion to revive, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft Corp. as the tech titan seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom.Photographer: Heather Khalifa\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n
The technology will capture and store around 90% of the CO2 emissions from the plant, according to a Google release. But some skeptics have cautioned that emissions capture is neither economical nor feasible at scale, and a nationwide carbon storage network would require as many as 96,000 miles of new pipelines, according to Energy Department estimates.<\/p>\n
Another option on the table is nuclear energy, which can provide huge amounts of round-the-clock power, free of carbon emissions. Google agreed last month to buy nuclear power from a plant that\u00a0NextEra Energy Inc. plans to restart in Iowa.<\/p>\n
But nuclear power is also expensive, and supply chain issues mean that new nuclear plants will take years to build and bring online. Even though the NextEra generator is already built \u2014\u00a0and was only shuttered in 2020 \u2014 the company won\u2019t start delivering power to Google\u2019s data centers until 2029.<\/p>\n
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To link data centers to power sources faster, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last month to expedite reviews for grid connections, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. As part of a draft rule Wright sent to the agency, those reviews would shrink to 60 days, a seismic shift for a process that currently can take years.<\/p>\n
Under the proposal, data centers could win a speedy review if they include new power plants or agree to curtail usage in response to grid strains during high-demand periods such as heatwaves. However, a data center vying to locate next to an existing power plant would require a study to determine if that generation capacity is needed to maintain grid reliability.<\/p>\n
Trump Headwinds<\/p>\n
Complicating matters is Trump, who has made the industry\u2019s AI ambitions central to his second-term economic agenda. In September, he welcomed leaders including Nadella and Zuckerberg for a White House dinner where he hailed tech companies\u2019\u00a0far-reaching infrastructure spending plans and promised help with permitting for energy projects.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Trump has roiled the tech companies\u2019 quest for electricity by attacking green energy with a vengeance and assailing global warming as \u201cthe greatest con job ever\u201d during\u00a0a United Nations speech. The administration has stopped or delayed\u00a0wind and solar initiatives \u2014\u00a0 some of which were near completion \u2014 and declined to send delegates to the COP30 climate conference in Brazil.<\/p>\n
One of Trump\u2019s biggest moves against renewables was to use the massive tax bill he signed in July to strip away clean energy incentives created through his predecessor Joe Biden\u2019s Inflation Reduction Act. Total annual deployment of new solar, wind and energy storage facilities in 2035 will be 21% lower \u2014\u00a0or 227 gigawatts less \u2014 than it would have been without the Trump tax law, according to BNEF forecasts.<\/p>\n
Wind turbine foundation components at the Revolution Wind construction hub in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2024.Photographer: Adam Glanzman\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n
Backing out of wind and solar projects as Trump envisions is problematic because doing so would force companies to use other power sources, like natural gas, that are not necessarily cheaper or faster to get into service, said Janous. He disputed the narrative that renewables can\u2019t sufficiently power data centers, arguing that\u00a0the grid should be made more flexible to better use what solar and wind can offer.<\/p>\n
Big tech companies likewise can\u2019t simply discard clean energy commitments that have been a decade in the making for some firms, which have put time and money into reaching them, said BNEF analyst Nayel Brihi.<\/p>\n
\u201cDropping out now would first of all hurt their branding a lot, but also would just not make a lot of business sense for them because of all the time and effort that\u2019s been put in already,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
–With assistance from Riley Griffin, Josh Saul and Mark Chediak.<\/p>\n
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\u00a92025 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) — Weeks after ChatGPT was unleashed on the world in November 2022, sustainability executives at\u00a0Microsoft Corp. realized…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,1877,5424,1418,82001,6737,54,85,46,134,82002,5536,2352,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-131026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-bloomberg","12":"tag-carbon-emissions","13":"tag-clean-energy","14":"tag-climate-commitments","15":"tag-data-center","16":"tag-donald-trump","17":"tag-il","18":"tag-israel","19":"tag-microsoft","20":"tag-power-purchase-agreements","21":"tag-renewable-energy","22":"tag-tech-companies","23":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}