Essay by Eric Worrall

Will anyone still believe big tech claims they care about the environment?

Big Tech is betting billions on AI — but can climate promises keep up?

The technology’s breakneck growth is testing tech giants’ climate credentials.

JON GOLDBERG
AUGUST 22, 2025

Artificial intelligence is sparking a once-in-a-generation economic opportunity. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are together projected to invest more than $300 billion in AI and data center infrastructure in 2025, and AI is expected to add more than $15 trillion to the global economy by 2030. 

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A cynical narrative has emerged that chasing AI’s promise means abandoning decarbonization. Recent trends give some credence to this view. Google’s emissions jumped 48% from 2019 to 2023 and Microsoft’s emissions rose 30% since 2019 due to AI-supported data center expansion. Amazon’s emissions also increased in 2024, partially driven by new data center construction.

The reality, however, is more nuanced. Near-term emissions are increasing, but leading hyperscalers are doubling down on clean energy and decarbonization, simply because their AI ambitions depend on it. 

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Read more: https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/big-tech-is-betting-billions-on-ai-but-can-climate-promises-keep-up/

Time Magazine also focuses on Google;

AUG 22, 2025 11:51 PM AET

What To Know About Google’s AI Climate Footprint

by Justin Worland
SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

For the climate concerned, the rise of the AI-reliant internet query is a cause for alarm. Many people have turned to ChatGPT and other services for simple questions. And even basic Google searches include an AI-derived result.

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Google’s progress boils down to two levers: cleaner power and more efficient chips and query crunching. 

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But then there’s the company’s efficiency measures. In energy circles, efficiency tends to refer to simply using less energy and making energy hardware run more productively—think of climate control or better insulation. While Google has done some of that, the most impressive efficiency gains have come through the AI ecosystem rather than the energy system. The company has created its own chips—which it calls TPUs, as opposed to broadly used GPUs. Those chips have become more efficient over time—some 30 times more efficient since 2018, according to Google’s sustainability report. The company has also improved the efficiency of its models using techniques that crunch queries differently, thereby reducing the needed compute power. And a few weeks ago the company announced a program to shift data center demand to times when the electricity grid is less stressed. 

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Read more: https://time.com/7311600/google-ai-climate-impact/

The problem with these claims are they implicitly suggest AI is a fixed quantity – if the chips are 30x more efficient, that means you need 30x less power right?

Only if AI use has peaked – which seems unlikely. More likely, any efficiency gains just mean you don’t have to divert as much fossil fuel power plant electricity to the cooling system.

I’ve no doubt the current AI boom contains a lot of bubble, but AI is here to stay. I’m using increasing amounts of AI in my daily work, as are a lot of people. The image at the top of this article was generated using AI. That AI summary at the top of your search results is starting to become useful.

Given soaring tech giant carbon footprints, do you believe tech giant claims they’re suddenly going to decarbonise it all away? Or is it more likely they’ll continue to swill cheap energy like pigs in the trough, while their PR departments work overtime trying to maintain a facade of green caring and sharing?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… most mines don’t know exactly what they are tossing out …”

We could get most metals for clean energy without opening new mines

An analysis of active US mines finds they already collect virtually all of the minerals the country needs for batteries, solar panels and wind turbines – but these critical minerals mostly go to waste

By James Dinneen

21 August 2025

The leftover ore discarded by US mines is packed with key minerals – enough to provide virtually all of the raw material needed to build clean energy technologies. Recovering just a fraction of these minerals could meet the country’s growing demand for green energy without requiring imports or environmentally-damaging new mines – but getting them is easier said than done.

“We have to get better at using the material that we mine,” says Elizabeth Holley at the Colorado School of Mines.

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These leftovers often contain other useful materials, including dozens of critical mineralsthe US government has identified as essential to military and energy technologies, such as solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. But the supply chains for some of these minerals are controlled by China, sparking urgent concern among the US and its allies they could be wielded for geopolitical leverage. That has spurred a search for alternative mineral sources, including mining byproducts and tailings.

However, most mines don’t know exactly what they are tossing out. “Many of the elements we currently consider critical were not in much use in the past, so no one was analysing for them,” says Holley.

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Just knowing where these minerals exist is hardly the only barrier. Current refining technology isn’t well-suited for these small, complicated waste streams, and deploying the necessary tech is too expensive for most US mines, says Megan O’Connor at Nth Cycle, a start-up focused on extracting critical minerals from unconventional sources.

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Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2493449-we-could-get-most-metals-for-clean-energy-without-opening-new-mines/

This seems a strange claim, or at least an odd take on the issue. Most mining engineers I’ve met could recite from memory exactly what is in the waste product of the last mine they worked on. And reprocessing waste from past mining operations is big business, in cases where the waste is valuable.

Those minerals will be extracted when the time is right. But until the value of extraction makes it profitable, a significant strategic need arises, or technological advances bring down the cost, why would anyone bother?

As for the claim such extraction could cover the entire needs of battery, solar panel, wind turbine manufacture, most of the estimates for the required minerals I’ve seen are so gigantic, lets just say expert or not, I’d like to see Elizabeth Holley’s calculations.