Google’s electricity demand jumped 37% in 2025, its largest load growth in history, and the company says its operational emissions still fell 2%. Both figures come from Google’s own 11th Environmental Report, which Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt introduced in a company blog post on June 30, 2026. They are the company’s numbers, not an outside audit, and the picture in the same document is more mixed than the headline.
What Google reports
Google said it signed agreements for over 12 GW of net-new clean energy in 2025 alone, which it compares to the power needs of a country the size of Greece for a year once the projects are running. A footnote says actual generation may differ from the contracted amounts because projects can be changed, cancelled or underperform. From 2010 to 2025 the company counts more than 240 agreements covering nearly 35 GW.
The company also said it matched 100% of its electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases for the ninth consecutive year. Its data centers, it said, use 83% less overhead energy than the industry average. Google said hardware, software and compute efficiencies, together with clean energy procurement, avoided over 58 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025, and that without them its ambition-based carbon footprint would have been five times larger.
On water, Google said its stewardship projects replenished approximately 7.7 billion gallons in 2025, roughly 78% of its freshwater consumption that year. It is working toward replenishing more than it consumes by 2030.
The harder numbers
The report does not read as a victory lap. Google acknowledges that its AI infrastructure buildout is “accelerating faster than the grid is decarbonizing” and says long waits to connect to the grid, fragmented markets, supply chain delays and regulatory bottlenecks are slowing new carbon-free energy.
Supply chain emissions grew by 25% year over year. Google ties that to the scale of new AI infrastructure and to an Asia-Pacific supply chain running on grids that still lack enough carbon-free power. The company also said that reaching its net-zero and 24/7 carbon-free energy moonshots “is getting harder.” It described those goals as intentionally aspirational from the start.
AI as a tool for cutting emissions
Google also argues that its technology helps others cut emissions. In 2025, it said, nine of its solutions helped individuals, cities and partners reduce an estimated 41 million tCO2e, roughly three times Google’s own emissions. It pointed to Google Earth tools that help solar and wind developers choose sites, Nest thermostats that automate home energy savings, and fuel-efficient routing in Google Maps.
The company added that SpeciesNet, an AI model, can recognize over 2,000 animal species in wildlife camera images with over 94% accuracy. These estimates of avoided emissions are Google’s own calculations, and the report’s methodology section explains how they were derived.
Google said it structures its energy deals to cover 100% of the costs of the power it uses, so that data center expansion does not burden other utility customers.
Sources
- Read Google’s 2026 Environmental Report
- Google’s 11th Environmental Report details 2025 progress—and AI’s energy cost
