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

defrost•about 2 hours ago

In related current news:

Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2026/07/11/irish-datacen...

  The latest figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that giant server farms now account for nearly a quarter of the country's metered electricity consumption.

  Their share rose to 23 percent in 2025 after passing 20 percent in 2023 and 14 percent in 2021 – up from just 5 percent way back in 2015.

Luckily this will all be offset by the pot of gold at the end of the AI rainbow.

Muromec•about 2 hours ago

23 percent is a bit fucked actually

amarcheschi•38 minutes ago

One more datacenter bro one more datacenter bro please I swear bro one more datacenter and everything will be OK please bro

simianwords•34 minutes ago

The optimal number of data centers is just enough so that my personal use is covered. No more. No less. Screw other people’s needs and demands because I know better.

Pluralism? What’s that?

fallingbananna•24 minutes ago

I know that market, and people for that matter don't care, but the environmentalist in me questions the word "needs" in the context of using AI.

Muromec•about 2 hours ago

But... Datacenters don't burn anything, right? Powerplants do and we try to switch all the transport and heating and whatever to be electric.

So the answer is to build the damb nuclear power and a lot of it and price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere

scottcha•2 minutes ago

They do have a growing amount of Scope 1 emissions (emissions from their on site sources) which originally was primarily on site diesel but due to grid interconnect delays have been growing number of on site gas turbines.

This certainly wouldn’t be necessary with adequate generation and transmission capacity.

black_puppydog•about 1 hour ago

> price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere

This is the only relevant bit actually. The rest will follow from there. And in principle, at least in Europe, we already have some mechanisms to do this. We'd "just" have to up the prices.

BUT of course with the right wing on the advance, and with them having identified basic physics (i.e. climate change) as a culture war terrain, this keeps being watered down... Oh well... This is why we can't have nice things... like a future...

59percentmore•35 minutes ago

*raise the prices

simianwords•17 minutes ago

The left wing version of climate conspiracy is that climate change will end humanity itself. This is not based on science.

Often repeated everywhere as a trump card to get what they want - crush technological and economic progress.

cold_pizz4•about 2 hours ago

We don't really need the French on the other hand, how could we live without AI?

JodieBenitez•34 minutes ago

Yann Le Cun enters the chat...

garganzol•about 2 hours ago

For a context: France relies heavily on automotive transport, plus it's a home to enormous agricultural sector, tractors are literally everywhere in the country during the summer. To a certain degree, structurally it resembles USA a lot.

timschmidt•about 1 hour ago

However they also quite famously rely on a majority of nuclear power for their electric grid. Great for France, but that makes them an already-low carbon emitter compared to many others and an ungenerous comparison.

ChrisArchitect•18 minutes ago

Microsoft latest report shows 25% emissions raised due to AI data centers

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870229

bamboozled•about 2 hours ago

Man, we are cooked, literally

timschmidt•about 1 hour ago

The solution is simple: require datacenters to overprovision solar panels and grid-scale batteries for themselves, and use that capacity to strengthen the grid and transition off of hydrocarbons.

ch4s3•43 minutes ago

You can’t get a grid tie for those panels in most of the US right now. The process for connecting to the grid is done serially, and requires a large study for any new generation.

timschmidt•4 minutes ago

No idea what you're talking about. My local utility lit up 100MW of solar over the last year alone. Everywhere I look is doing the same.

simgt•about 2 hours ago

No, wait! The increased productivity will lead to a decoupling of the economy from resources consumption and GHGs emission. Just one more data center.

bamboozled•about 1 hour ago

It’s such a tiring narrative isn’t it ?

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

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion (23 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews