FILE - A sign is displayed on a Google building at their campus in Mountain View, Calif., on Sept. 24, 2019. Google fell far short of its ambitious goals to address climate change by cleaning up its operations, according to the company’s annual Environmental Report released on Tuesday, July 2, 2024. Three years ago, Google set an ambitious plan to address climate change by going “net zero,” meaning it would release no more climate-changing gases into the air than it removes, by 2030.
Lisa Sachs, director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, said Google should be doing more to partner with cleaner companies and invest in the electrical grid. “We know this is not going to be easy and that our approach will need to continue to evolve," Brandt added, "and it will require us to navigate a lot of uncertainty, including this uncertainty around the future of AI’s environmental impacts.”needed to power AI threaten the entire transition to clean electricity, an important part of addressing climate change.