Amazon’s carbon emissions rose 16% in 2025 amid data center boom

Amazon Amazon.com, Inc. ↗ 0.07% emitted roughly 81 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025, a 16% jump from the prior year driven by data center construction and delivery operations, the company disclosed in its annual sustainability report published Wednesday. The increase marks the second consecutive year of rising emissions for the e-commerce and cloud computing giant, whose carbon footprint has grown 58% since 2019 — the year it pledged to reach net-zero by 2040.mezha+1

Emissions tied to purchased electricity surged 34%, reflecting ballooning energy consumption at facilities powering Amazon Web Services and logistics networks.mezha

Google Posts Largest Annual Increase

Google's Alphabet Inc. ↘ 1.11% environmental report, released Tuesday, showed greenhouse gas emissions rose 18% year-over-year — the largest annual increase the company has ever reported — driven largely by manufacturing AI hardware including chips and servers. Electricity demand jumped 37%, roughly 3.5 times higher than 2019 levels, while water consumption climbed 34% to 10.9 billion gallons.axios

"This rapid expansion in energy demand is a reality we must manage actively, and we're committed to ensuring that the growth of AI doesn't become a rationale for lowering our environmental standards," Google's report stated.axios

Despite the growth, Google signed a record 12 gigawatts of clean energy agreements and held its share of carbon-free electricity roughly flat, while electricity-related emissions fell 3% from 2024.axios

Data Centers' True Footprint Far Larger Than Estimated

The disclosures arrived alongside a study from Allianz Trade, released Monday, estimating global data center emissions at 286 million metric tons of CO2 in 2025 — 57% higher than International Energy Agency estimates. Electricity consumption accounted for 76% of that footprint, with hardware manufacturing and construction contributing another 23%.yahoo+1

Without grid decarbonization, the study warned, data center emissions could more than double to 643 million metric tons by 2030, generating an estimated $154 billion in annual climate damages. Nearly 70% of global data center emissions are currently concentrated in the United States and China.allianz-trade+1

The reports underscore how the AI infrastructure buildout has transformed once-routine corporate sustainability disclosures into closely watched scorecards — measuring not accomplishments, but the widening gap between climate pledges and operational reality.