News Link • Robots and Artificial Intelligence
Google -- the former green giant -- shifts back to fossil fuels in the AI race
• https://joannenova.com.au, By Jo NovaEven though The Goolag has been censoring skeptics and lecturing the public for ten (or twenty) years about the dangers of fossil fuels, now that it wants more power, Google chooses "gas". Never mind the families that can't afford dinner …
Google didn't just promise to use more renewables—it promised to run on carbon-free power every hour of every day. "Climate Change is an urgent threat to humanity," said Google in 2020. But now Google wants to build a 933MW gas plant in Texas, and is exploring building another huge gas plant in Nebraska.
Google was a key part of the marketing and election campaign to crush fossil fuels and promote the renewables industry, and it's not even pretending that solar and wind power are the answer any more.
Google to tap into gas plant for AI datacenter in sharp turn from climate goals
— by Dara Kerr, The Guardian,
Michael Thomas, the founder of Cleanview and author of the report [on Google's new gas plant] said that this power plant would be one of the first direct investments in fossil fuel infrastructure that he's seen with Google.
"Google has spent decades crafting an image as a clean energy leader," said Thomas. "I've always considered them to be the most committed to their climate goals. But these projects suggest a major strategic pivot at the company could be under way."
Google are still pushing for Net Zero (they say) but don't ask them any hard questions:
Asked by Axios last week at an energy conference in Houston about how natural gas jives with the company's clean energy goals and overall strategy, Google's head of advanced energy, Michael Terrell, said: "We don't have anything to say on that."
In 2024, the company reported a 48% rise in greenhouse gas emissions since 2019, due to datacenter energy consumption.
What they called climate commitments are now referred to as "climate moonshots."




