16 SEPTEMBER 2026
A comparison of Google, Microsoft and Amazon’s latest environmental disclosures reveals a difficult reality: efficiency and clean-energy procurement are advancing, but digital infrastructure is expanding at an extraordinary pace. * This is not outside criticism. It is what the companies said about themselves.
Between June and July 2026, Google, Microsoft and Amazon each published their latest environmental and sustainability reports, covering their 2025 performance. Read together, the disclosures point to a growing tension: AI and digital infrastructure are expanding electricity demand faster than clean-energy systems can always keep pace.
That is not the conclusion of an activist campaign or an external think tank. It is increasingly visible in Big Tech’s own disclosures. And the numbers are difficult to ignore.
The Numbers, Company by Company
Google: Electricity and water are rising with AI infrastructure
Google’s 2026 Environmental Report, released on 30 June 2026 and covering 2025, reports a 37% year-over-year increase in electricity consumption.
At the same time, operational Scope 1 and Scope 2 market-based emissions fell 2%, while supply-chain emissions rose 25%. Google’s total greenhouse gas footprint, combining operations and its supply chain, increased 18% year over year and is now roughly 80% above its 2019 baseline. The company also contracted more than 12 GW of net-new clean energy in 2025, its largest annual total to date.
Water use increased as well. Google reported a 34% increase in water consumption, reaching approximately 10.9 billion gallons. The report acknowledges a central difficulty facing the AI buildout: infrastructure expansion is occurring faster than grid decarbonisation in some markets. The numbers illustrate the challenge. Google can increase clean-energy procurement and reduce operational emissions while its broader environmental footprint continues to face pressure from the physical expansion of AI infrastructure and its supply chain.
Microsoft: The accounting story needs careful reading
Microsoft’s 2026 Environmental Sustainability Report, covering FY2025, reports approximately 37 million MWh of electricity consumption, an increase of about 24% year over year. Scope 2 emissions accounted for approximately 13% of Microsoft’s total emissions, compared with nearly 2% the previous year. However, this figure requires context.
Microsoft changed how it accounted for certain unbundled renewable-energy certificates. The company says this change increases reported emissions in the near term while allowing it to focus more on developing new carbon-free electricity rather than relying on certificates alone. Even after accounting for the methodology change, Microsoft’s total reported emissions increased 25% year over year in FY2025, its largest annual increase to date. The company attributes this trajectory to the growth of its data-centre infrastructure alongside the accounting change.
The underlying growth in electricity demand is also significant. Microsoft says its sustainability strategy is entering a new phase as AI changes the scale and speed of technological development. Its 2026 report highlights the need for additional carbon-free electricity and investment in grid infrastructure as demand from cloud computing and AI continues to grow.
Amazon: Better efficiency, but higher absolute emissions
Amazon’s 2025 Sustainability Report reports a 16% increase in absolute carbon emissions from 2024 to 2025, while carbon intensity has fallen 38% since 2019. Its AWS data centres achieved a global average Power Usage Effectiveness, or PUE, of 1.14 in 2025, improving from 1.15 in 2024.
Amazon also reported that 100% of the electricity consumed by its global operations was matched with renewable-energy sources in 2025, for the third consecutive year. Taken together, these figures illustrate an important tension:
Efficiency can improve while absolute environmental impact rises when activity expands rapidly.
That tension sits at the heart of the current AI sustainability debate.
What the Three Reports Have in Common
The three disclosures are not identical and should not be treated as a single dataset. Their accounting boundaries, methodologies and reporting approaches differ. But they point to a common structural challenge.
A company can become more efficient per unit of computing while still consuming significantly more electricity because demand is expanding faster than efficiency gains. Renewable-energy procurement can also grow rapidly without immediately changing the physical electricity mix in every location where new data centres operate.
Similarly, carbon intensity can fall while absolute emissions rise. That is not necessarily evidence that efficiency measures have failed. It is evidence that scale matters. The faster AI infrastructure expands, the more difficult it becomes for efficiency gains and clean-energy procurement to keep pace with the absolute growth in demand.
Why Self-Reported Numbers Matter
Corporate sustainability reports are not neutral scientific measurements.
They depend on accounting boundaries, methodologies, market-based instruments and disclosure choices. This makes direct comparisons difficult. A 24% increase in one company’s electricity consumption cannot automatically be compared with a 16% increase in another company’s emissions as though they were equivalent metrics.
But the disclosures remain important. The companies themselves are documenting the scale of the infrastructure transition, the environmental pressures they are encountering and the measures they are using to address them. A renewable-energy purchase does not, by itself, build a transmission line, shorten a grid-connection queue or make a carbon-intensive regional grid decarbonise overnight.
The distinction between contracting clean energy and physically transforming the energy system is becoming increasingly important as AI infrastructure expands.
The Gulf Faces the Same Infrastructure Question
This issue is not confined to Silicon Valley or Seattle.
The Gulf is rapidly positioning itself as a major hub for artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital infrastructure. That makes the relationship between AI growth, electricity demand, cooling, water and clean-energy availability particularly relevant to the region.
Amazon’s global data provide one useful illustration. AWS reported a global average PUE of 1.14 in 2025, an improvement from 1.15 in 2024. PUE is a useful measure of data-centre efficiency, although it does not capture the full environmental footprint of a facility.
For the Gulf, where cooling demand and water availability are already major infrastructure considerations, AI expansion creates a sustainability challenge that cannot be addressed through procurement certificates alone. It will require generation capacity, resilient grids, efficient cooling, water management, energy storage and access to reliable low-carbon electricity.
Big Tech’s experience therefore matters not because the Gulf will necessarily follow exactly the same path, but because these companies are providing an early look at what happens when digital infrastructure grows at extraordinary speed.
What Happens Next
The next generation of sustainability reporting will need to show more than renewable-energy procurement or improvements in carbon intensity. It will need to show whether infrastructure growth is compatible with local grid capacity, water availability, clean-power availability and absolute emissions trajectories.
That is where the real test begins. Big Tech’s climate challenge is becoming less about whether efficiency can improve and more about whether those improvements can keep pace with the speed of expansion. The next sustainability reports will provide further evidence of whether today’s gap is a temporary consequence of an infrastructure transition or a structural feature of the AI economy.
For now, some of the most revealing evidence is coming from the companies themselves.
The receipts are in. The question is what happens next.
Big Tech’s 2025 Environmental Picture
| Company | What changed in 2025 | What it tells us |
| Electricity +37%; operational emissions -2%; supply-chain emissions +25%; total footprint +18%, roughly 80% above 2019; water consumption +34% | Infrastructure growth is putting pressure on decarbonisation despite major clean-energy procurement | |
| Microsoft | Electricity +24% to approximately 37 million MWh; Scope 2 approximately 13% of total emissions, up from nearly 2%, partly reflecting an accounting change; total emissions +25% | AI growth and accounting changes are complicating the emissions trajectory |
| Amazon | Absolute emissions +16%; carbon intensity -38% since 2019; global PUE 1.14 | Efficiency is improving while absolute emissions continue to rise |
The metrics are not identical and should not be interpreted as a like-for-like environmental ranking. They illustrate different dimensions of the same underlying challenge: the rapid physical expansion of digital infrastructure.
Key Sources
- Google – 2026 Environmental Report
- Microsoft – 2026 Environmental Sustainability Report
- Amazon – 2025 Sustainability Report
- Amazon Web Services – AWS Cloud Sustainability and PUE data
