AI Race: Google's Energy Consumption Increased by 37 Percent

Google has released its 2026 environmental report. It acknowledges that the rapid development of AI technologies has caused an unprecedented increase in the energy consumption of the company's infrastructure. By the end of 2025, electricity consumption increased by 37 percent compared to the previous year, totaling 43.6 million MW·h. For reference, this amount is equivalent to the annual consumption of entire countries such as New Zealand or Denmark. This is reported by Ixbt.com news reports.

The main reasons for such a sharp rise in energy consumption are cited as the expansion of the Google Cloud platform, the development of Gemini generative models, and the increase in computing power for the search system. Additionally, the scaling of the YouTube platform has created an additional load. According to ixbt.com, the company's total energy consumption has grown by more than 250 percent since 2019, clearly demonstrating the impact of the global AI race on energy systems.

Green Energy and Technological Efficiency

Despite the complexity of the situation, Google emphasizes that it has succeeded in partially "decoupling" greenhouse gas emissions from the growth in energy consumption. As a result of purchasing large volumes of clean energy sources, operational emissions decreased by 2 percent over the year. For nine consecutive years, the corporation has been purchasing renewable energy equivalent to its annual consumption. However, this balance is on an annual basis, and some data centers still operate on fossil fuels at certain times.

Google is also actively working on improving the efficiency of its AI infrastructure. The company's data center energy efficiency metric (PUE) was 1.09, which is 83 percent better than the industry average. In particular, it was announced that the new generation TPU Ironwood processors are 30 times more efficient than the first models introduced in 2018. Furthermore, the energy consumed for a single text query in Gemini systems has decreased 33-fold within one year.

Nuclear Energy and Future Plans

To cover future energy needs, Google is investing in more stable sources. The company is implementing the following major projects:

• The world's first corporate agreement to purchase energy via small modular nuclear reactors from Kairos Power;
• Participation in the restart of the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant with a capacity of 600 MW;
• Investments in geothermal energy and controlled thermonuclear fusion projects.

Nevertheless, the problem of indirect emissions in the supply chain (Scope 3) persists. Due to the construction of new data centers and the production of specialized semiconductors, emissions in this category increased by 25 percent. Google's report notes that AI not only increases energy consumption but also helps fight climate change. For example, route optimization in Google Maps and smart energy management systems helped other organizations reduce CO2 emissions by 41 million tons.

In conclusion, Google representatives admitted that AI infrastructure is currently developing faster than the global energy system's transition to low-carbon sources. Therefore, the main task in the coming years will be not to reduce computations, but to create a new energy infrastructure that ensures growth without harming the climate.