Google’s annual electricity consumption rose by 37 percent in 2025, the largest single-year increase in the company’s history, driven by an AI infrastructure buildout that the company itself acknowledges is “accelerating faster than the grid is decarbonizing.”
The figures come from Google’s 2026 Environmental Report, published June 30. Google’s data centers consumed 42 million megawatt-hours of electricity in 2025, up from 30.6 million MWh in 2024, bringing total electricity usage to more than 250 percent above 2019 levels. The company attributed the increase to growth in Google Cloud, YouTube video streaming, and data center construction supporting AI products and services.
To put the scale in context: Google’s data centers alone consumed roughly as much electricity as entire countries such as New Zealand, Denmark, or Nigeria.
Despite the surge in consumption, Google reported that operational (Scope 2) emissions actually fell by 2 percent over the same period. The company said it achieved this by signing agreements for more than 12 gigawatts of new clean energy in 2025, more than its previous two years of procurement combined and the largest annual total in its history.
However, the climate math is becoming harder to sustain. Electricity-related emissions fell just 3 percent from 2024, compared with a 12 percent decline the year before. Google is buying clean power faster than ever and still losing ground on the pace of improvement.
Google’s total greenhouse gas emissions rose 18 percent in 2025, the largest annual increase the company has ever reported, driven primarily by the manufacturing of AI chips and servers rather than by operating the data centers themselves. This is a supply-chain problem Google can control less easily than its power procurement.
The company highlighted one efficiency bright spot: the median Gemini Apps text prompt now uses 33 times less energy and produces a 44-fold smaller carbon footprint than it did 12 months earlier, the result of hardware, software, and model improvements.
“We remain focused on scaling abundant and affordable clean power globally and progressing technological innovations that drive down emissions,” Google wrote in the report.
Sources: Google’s AI buildout drove 37% increase in electricity use in 2025 (Ars Technica, July 2, 2026); Google 2026 Environmental Report (Google, June 30, 2026)