AI boom blows up Big Tech’s climate promises
Google logo on a building in New York. (Gene J. Puskar / Associated Press) - Share via
The greenhouse gas emissions of Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google spiked in 2025, pointing to a growing problem for the hyperscalers: reconciling their climate goals with the massive amount of energy required to power AI, much of it still generated from fossil fuels.
Amazon’s emissions rose 16% from 2024, the company said in a sustainability report released Wednesday. It emitted about 81 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent last year, roughly as much as the emissions from 19 million gas-powered cars on the road. The increase was driven by data center construction and fuel used for deliveries, the report said.
Google’s “ambition-based” emissions — a definition that excludes some parts of its supply chain — climbed 18% overall in 2025. Its Scope 1 emissions from its own operations, excluding purchased electricity, went up 20% compared to 2024, due in part to its expanding data center portfolio, the company said in its own sustainability report released Tuesday.
Amazon has a goal of reaching net zero by 2040, while Google is targeting 2030. As they balance AI’s power needs with sustainability, the companies report varying degrees of success.
Google’s electricity use went up by 37% last year, but it managed a small drop in its Scope 2 emissions from purchased power due to its sourcing of clean energy. Amazon, by contrast, said its emissions from buying electricity rose 34%.
Other tech giants are reckoning with the same challenge. Microsoft Corp. pledged to match 100% of its hourly electricity consumption with purchases of zero-carbon energy by 2030. Bloomberg News reported earlier this year that the company has weighed scaling back the commitment because of data center expansion.
Microsoft and Meta Platforms Inc., in their most recent reports published last year, cited emissions jumps of 23% and 64%, respectively. Meta set a net-zero target for 2030 across its entire value chain.
Data centers’ hunger for power is helping drive up utility bills and spurring investment in US fossil fuel infrastructure, including natural gas power plants. SpaceX is using gas turbines to run its AI data centers in Tennessee and Mississippi.
But producing the hardware, concrete and steel used in the facilities is also energy intensive. Google, in its new report, reported a 25% rise in Scope 3 or supply-chain emissions from 2024 that it attributed mostly to hardware manufacturing and data center construction.
Critics argue the industry should be doing more to curb its carbon footprint.
“We’re essentially in a climate crisis and we should not be having emissions growth at all, arguably, and yet the data centers are going in the opposite direction,” said Sasha Luccioni, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Sustainable AI Group, which works to measure and limit the environmental impact of the sector.
Amazon and Google both said they remain committed to their sustainability targets. Google’s report noted that its path to net zero will not be linear, “given our AI infrastructure build-out is currently accelerating faster than the grid is decarbonizing.”
“While the speed and scale of AI adoption is unique — and the change is happening faster and more broadly than anything else we’ve encountered in our lifetimes — the need to stay stubborn on our vision and flexible on the details is familiar territory,” Amazon’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst said in its report.
This spring, activist investors asked Amazon, Alphabet and Meta in shareholder proposals to explain how they’re reconciling surging electricity demand for AI with their climate commitments. None of the proposals earned majority support.
Raimonde and Soper write for Bloomberg.
More to Read
Police officer raped two women and abused a third
Police officer raped two women and abused a third
He 'carried out deliberate and repeated acts of abuse against women'.
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Add us as preferred source By Antonio Scancariello, News Reporter 11:17, Thu, Jul 2, 2026 Updated: 11:58, Thu, Jul 2, 2026 
A former police officer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after being found guilty of violent and non-recent sexual offences against women. Cameron Ross, 39, was sentenced on Thursday, 2 July, for the offences that took place in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in 2012 and 2014 and Inverness between 2019 and 2022.
He had denied charges, but had been found guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh on Monday, May 25, where he was also sentenced. During the trial, the court heard how Ross raped the first woman after they met at a party on Lewis between August and October 2012. A second woman told the court of how Ross sat on her and restrained her before raping her in June 2014. He went on to subject a third woman to a course of abusive behaviour between October 2019 and June 2022 in Inverness, the court heard. Alongside being found guilty of rape and domestic abuse, the former policeman was also found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice and threatening or abusive behaviour, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said.
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Ross, who resigned from Police Scotland in June 2026, has been placed on the sex offenders register indefinitely.
Faye Cook, Procurator Fiscal for High Court Sexual Offences at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), said: “Cameron Ross carried out deliberate and repeated acts of abuse against women over the course of a decade. This was sustained offending, which caused significant harm. As a police officer, he was in a position of trust. Instead of upholding the law, he chose to break it in a serious and persistent way. I would urge anyone affected by similar offending to come forward and report it. The Crown is committed to prosecuting those responsible for sexual and domestic abuse, regardless of who they are.”
Chief Superintendent Helen Harrison, Head of Professional Standards, said: "Ross was a serving officer at the time of these offences and when the report was received in June 2022, we immediately suspended him. He has since resigned from the service. If he had remained, we would have progressed gross misconduct proceedings and he would have been dismissed as his actions and behaviour will not be tolerated in Police Scotland.
"I want to thank those who came forward and recognise how difficult that can be when the perpetrator is a police officer.
"Police Scotland continues to work with survivors’ groups to improve our response to violence against women and girls to embed an approach which places survivors at the heart of our investigation with a trauma-informed approach and we remain committed to further improvement.
"Equally, over a period of years, and advanced by Lady Elish Angiolini's review in 2020, there has been a Scotland wide focus on police ethics, conduct and scrutiny."
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The superintendent also said police "continue to fully engage with those developments to strengthen our safeguarding of policing's integrity and we're working to embed new legislation to continue that improvement".
"We fully accept the onus is on policing to build confidence with members of the public, victims and witnesses to ensure they can report wrongdoing by police officers and staff, and can be confident that robust action will be taken.
“Police Scotland is committed to reviewing its processes, policies, and procedures, which continue to evolve and are shaped by feedback. The ability to handle police misconduct matters in a more robust, timely and transparent way will now also be greatly strengthened by the Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Act 2025,” she said.
Met Office issues heatwave forecast as 9 areas facing 30C heat on Sunday
Met Office issues heatwave forecast as 9 areas facing 30C heat on Sunday - full list
Temperatures are due to rise again this weekend.
Share Article Facebook X LinkedIn Reddit Bluesky Email Copy Link Link copied Add us as preferred source Comments By Rebecca Robinson 11:16, Thu, Jul 2, 2026 Updated: 11:17, Thu, Jul 2, 2026 
The Met Office has revealed which areas could see temperatures of 30C this weekend as it gives its verdict on another possible heatwave. Summery conditions are due to resume on Sunday as a high-pressure weather system moves in from the Azores.
This is forecast to bring rising temperatures, with many areas in the high 20s, and South-east England potentially reaching 30C. Tony Wisson, Met Office deputy chief forecaster, said: "Toward the weekend, high pressure will continue to build in across most of the UK as it extends from the Azores.
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"This will lead to more settled, warm or very warm conditions for many, especially across England and Wales, though some rain may still affect the far north.
"The forecast for this weekend suggests that temperatures could approach high 20s°C across parts of England, perhaps 30°C in parts of the southeast, with values of mid to high 20s°C in Wales.
"Although a return to heatwave conditions is looking increasingly likely for some areas, the likelihood of such extreme high temperatures or high levels of humidity as last week is currently low."
The Met Office forecast for Saturday to Monday adds: "Scotland, Northern Ireland and the northwest of England will often be rather cloudy and breezy with outbreaks of rain. Mostly dry further south with some sunshine. Turning hot in places."
Met Office names 9 areas facing 30C heat
The Met Office said temperatures could reach 30C in areas of South-east England, which includes the counties:
- Berkshire
- Buckinghamshire
- East Sussex
- Hampshire
- Isle of Wight
- Kent
- Oxfordshire
- Surrey
- West Sussex
NYTimes: DHS Has Arrested 10,000 Illegals This Week
NYTimes: DHS Has Arrested 10,000 Illegals This Week
The Department of Homeland Security has doubled the arrest rate of illegal migrants to 2,000 per day, according to the New York Times.
The paper reported Wednesday night federal immigration officials have detained more than 10,000 people since Friday.
The push was prompted by the White House and aimed at identified targets, including some of the migrants who have already been ordered home by judges, the paper said, adding:
ICE officials were told that the White House wanted an increase in arrests, according to three officials with knowledge of the conversations. One of the officials said that it was unclear how long the pace could continue, but that ICE officials had been told that 2,000 arrests a day was the new standard for enforcement.
[…]
In recent days, ICE officers have launched an intense push to ramp up arrests. Arrests topped out on Saturday when authorities detained over 2,400 people, according to documents obtained by The Times. The detention population inside ICE facilities has jumped nearly 4,000, to more than 63,000 in the agency’s custody as of Tuesday, according to internal documents.
So far, agency chief Markwayne Mullin has said little or nothing about the arrest campaign. But last week, Mullin told Breitbart News:
Within the next six weeks we’ll probably pass what we deported in all of ’25 …I think we’ll definitely do it within two months but should be probably six weeks at the current rate.
The agency can arrest and deport many migrants because it has far more agents, jail cells, and lawyers.
It has also won many court battles, established many bureaucratic speed-ups, and adopted many time-saving regulatory reforms.
If maintained, the campaign would likely push the annual deportations above one million, partly because many additional migrants will follow their arrested relatives home.
The exit rate might climb further if the nation’s population of at least 14 million illegal migrants, if other agencies can block their bank accounts, work permits, driving licenses, and housing.
RELATED: Eric Schmitt — We’re Not Doing Mass Amnesty, The Deportations Will Continue
The DHS pressure will likely force employers to recruit more Americans — and pay them higher wages — before the November election. Nationwide, rents have been drifting down as federal agencies push more migrants home.
But the DHS push cannot continue for long, the New York Times suggested:
Top ICE officials were told to make sure that as many officers as possible were working seven days a week, and to put 80 percent of their officers on arrest operations, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations. Top supervisors were expected to be working closely on the operations as well.
The push helps to explain media reports about field arrests in several states, including Texas and Florida, in Milwaukee and greater Wisconsin. For example, Breitbart News reported on Wednesday:
Federal agents raided a Birmingham, Alabama, manufacturing plant, detaining more than 30 people as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
The raid took place on Tuesday at the Scholar Craft facility in Birmingham. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security agents, along with state and local police, executed federal search warrants at the plant.
Officials say the operation is part of a broader investigation into identity fraud and unlawful employment practices, specifically targeting the use of fake IDs and stolen documents to secure jobs.
The campaign is likely to avoid the farm sector, as well as the many restaurants and Indian-run hotels that are critical for the nation’s non-residential real-estate sector.
There is also little sign of a federal crackdown on the Indian-dominated white-collar sector, where many visa programs enable the half-hidden rampant fraud, discrimination, and kickbacks that have sidelined a huge number of American college grads.
Social media sites are also showing new videos of low-drama street arrests of tradesmen and blue-collar workers;
