Datacentres drive up big tech’s carbon emissions to a third of those of France

Microsoft, Amazon, and Google collectively emitted 119 million metric tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in the financial year ending March 2026, a nearly 20% increase from the prior year and roughly a third of France's total emissions. The surge is driven primarily by rapid datacentre construction to support AI workloads. Microsoft's emissions rose 25%, Google's 18%, and Amazon's 16%, yet all three companies maintain net-zero targets (Google and Microsoft by 2030, Amazon by 2040). Experts note that cloud migration also allows other corporations to obscure their own digital carbon footprints, and that carbon credit markets may be tightening as demand from tech giants grows. The broader tech sector is on track to spend $765bn this year on AI datacentre infrastructure, with roughly 1,200 new datacentres expected globally by 2030.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/11/microsoft-amazon-google-datacentre-carbon-emissions-france. 8 Sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.