Data Centre Emissions and How Microsoft and Google Report Them

Data centres are physical facilities used by organisations to store their data, applications, and IT infrastructure. They are essential to the digital world, supporting services from cloud computing to social media. However, data centres are also significant consumers of energy and contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, affecting the climate transition of tech giants and smaller companies.?

In this article, we'll examine sources of data centre emissions, how to reduce them, and how 谷歌 and 微软 report their emissions progress associated with data centres (or the lack thereof).

Are emissions from data centres significant?

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), there are more than 8,000 data centres worldwide, accounting for almost 2% of global electricity consumption. This marks a significant increase from previous IEA estimates of 1-1.5%, driven by the rise of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence (AI). IEA expects that energy consumption of data centres will continue to grow and can rise by 50% in Europe and 30% in the U.S. by 2026. Data centers’ GHG emissions, estimated to be around 1% of global emissions in 2020, are expected to grow accordingly.

The low-carbon transition plans of the world's largest tech companies, Microsoft and Google, have already fallen victim to the growth of their data centres.??

In 2020, Microsoft published a pledge to become carbon-negative by 2030 and remove from the environment all the carbon the company has ever emitted by 2050. This transition statement has become one of the most ambitious among the tech giants. However, introducing AI technologies has led to an increase in Microsoft's emissions rather than the planned reduction. According to the company’s Environmental Sustainability report (Figure 1), their emissions rose 29% last year. This increase was primarily due to the construction of data centres needed to expand the company's capacity for AI integration.

Google’s emissions have increased even more. In the 2024 Environmental report (Figure 2), Google admitted that its GHG emissions represent a 13% year-over-year increase and a 48% increase compared to the 2019 target base year. It happened “primarily due to increases in data centre energy consumption and supply chain emissions.”?

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Where do data centres’ emissions come from?

For IT equipment to operate efficiently, it must be kept in a cool climate, which consumes much power. Electricity consumption makes up a significant portion of data centres’ footprint. This demand is primarily driven by сomputing, cooling, and other associated IT equipment in data centres. These emissions occur at the electricity power plants and are categorised as Scope 2. According to Schneider Electric calculations, Scope 2 emissions represent 31%- 53% of total emissions during the first five years of operation. However, as electricity consumption increases, this percentage rises to around 60% in later years.

Figure 3 shows which scopes most data centres' emissions fall under.

Google states in its report that its Scope 2 emissions currently represent 24% of the total carbon footprint, with the primary sources being purchased electricity for data centres and offices (Figure 4). Interestingly, for Microsoft, Scope 2 represents only 2.6% of total emissions. Most of Microsoft’s increased emissions stemmed not from digital operations but from physical sources, constituting Scope 3 emissions. The company explains that the rise in its Scope 3 emissions “primarily comes from constructing more data centres and the associated embodied carbon in building materials, as well as hardware components such as semiconductors, servers, and racks… We reflect the challenges the world must overcome to develop and use greener concrete, steel, fuels, and chips.”

?Scope 1 typically represents less than 1% of data centres’ total emissions, which is confirmed by both Google and Microsoft, where Scope 1 emissions represent 1% and 0.96%, respectively.

How to reduce data centres’ emissions

The Assessment Framework for Data Centres suggests dozens of emission reduction actions?

and disclosures for data centres. This document forms the basis of mandatory reporting under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and is intended to help determine whether data centres meet the requirements of the EU Taxonomy. Among the framework’s suggestions are:

• Introducing a plan for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Management under EU guidelines and internationally standardised methodologies
• Considering, reporting and documenting the proportion of energy used by the data centre that comes from renewable/sustainable sources
• Ensuring that air quality is monitored and managed to ensure that critical equipment is not damaged?
• Designing all areas of the data centre to maximise the energy efficiency of the facility
• Making the energy-use performance of the software a major success factor of the project
• Completely decommissioning and removing any equipment that is not required or used to support services no longer in use.

Another helpful document is the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact, a self-regulatory initiative representing data centre operators within the EU. This document describes actions to make data centres climate-neutral by 2030. It states, in particular, that data centre electricity demand should be matched by 75% renewable energy by the end of 2025 and 100% by the end of 2030. Google and Microsoft are both signatories of this pact.?

How Microsoft and Google plan to reduce emissions

Microsoft focuses mainly on tackling Scope 3 emissions. According to the report, this means “decarbonising industrial processes such as steel, concrete, and other building material production for use in our campus and data centre construction, as well as jet fuel for business travel and logistics.”?

For Google, Scope 2 emissions are a key focus of their decarbonisation efforts. Some of their key Scope 2 emissions reduction levers include energy management and carbon-free energy procurement. They aim to build “the world’s most energy-efficient compute infrastructure, outfitting each data centre with high-performance servers designed to use as little energy as possible compared to the amount of compute they process.” The company also plans to reduce its Scope 2 emissions by procuring carbon-free energy.

Both Google and Microsoft reports are available on etOso, along with dozens of other data centre reports. To access them, sign up on etOso. You will also find examples of competitor reports there and learn more about best practices in reporting.