Google, Amazon Sustainability Reports Show Rising Emissions
07 Jul 2026
Emissions climb as AI infrastructure expands
Google and Amazon released their sustainability reports this week, and the numbers point in the wrong direction for both companies' climate goals. Google's total carbon emissions are up 25% since last year, while Amazon's rose 16% over the same period. Both companies have pledged to zero-out their carbon emissions in the coming years, but the gap between those pledges and current trajectories is widening.
The AI buildout is driving the numbers
The emissions increases track closely with the ongoing AI infrastructure race. Amazon added more than 1.2 gigawatts of data center capacity in Q4 2025 alone, and the company added more data center capacity globally in 2025 than any other company. Google's Scope 3 emissions—which cover indirect emissions across its supply chain—increased by 2.1 million metric tons last year and are now double what they were in 2019, the baseline year cited in the report.
A key driver behind this: many leading-edge chip factories are located in Asia, where electrical grids remain dominated by fossil fuels. As tech companies scale up chip production and data center capacity to meet AI demand, they're increasingly exposed to carbon-intensive supply chains they don't fully control.
Why the clean-energy gap matters
Part of the challenge is structural. Steel and cement industries—both essential to data center and infrastructure construction—are heavy polluters, and low-to-zero carbon startups in these sectors are not yet ready to deliver at the scale tech companies need. At the same time, there are signs that some tech companies are falling back on fossil fuels to power data centers, which could increase carbon exposure across the broader supply chain.
The report does not specify what target years Google and Amazon have set for their net-zero pledges, nor does it break down how much of the emissions increase is directly attributable to AI workloads versus other operations. Absolute emissions figures for each company—beyond the percentage changes—were also not detailed, making it hard to gauge the full scale of the increase.
Why founders should care
For startups building on major cloud platforms, these trends carry real implications, though the exact magnitude remains uncertain:
- Indirect carbon exposure is likely rising. Founders relying on Google Cloud or AWS infrastructure could increasingly inherit carbon footprints tied to fossil-fuel-powered data centers, especially as providers scale capacity faster than clean-energy supply can keep pace.
- Scrutiny may intensify for AI-heavy startups. As cloud providers report rising emissions, companies built heavily on AI compute could plausibly face growing questions from investors or customers about their infrastructure's environmental footprint.
- Hardware-dependent startups may face supply-chain risk. With chip manufacturing concentrated in regions where grids still lean on fossil fuels, founders building hardware or relying on chip-intensive products could be exposed to emissions risk further up their supply chains.
- A market opportunity may be emerging. The gap between corporate net-zero pledges and actual emissions trends suggests real demand could be forming for scalable low-carbon materials—particularly in steel and cement—and clean-energy solutions tailored to data center needs.
The bottom line
Google and Amazon's sustainability reports this week make clear that AI's infrastructure boom is currently outpacing clean-energy solutions, at least in the near term. For founders, the takeaway isn't necessarily alarm—it's awareness. Startups building AI products, relying on major cloud providers, or sourcing hardware from carbon-intensive supply chains may want to start tracking these dynamics, both as a risk to manage and, for climate-tech founders, as a market signal worth watching.