Energy Dead End: AI Corporations’ Emissions Soar 239% Amid Infrastructure Boom

The hypocrisy of the ESG agendas of major IT corporations has been shattered by dry numbers. On September 3, 2026, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Benchmarking Alliance published a shocking report: the carbon emissions of the top four AI providers increased by 239% between 2020 and 2024.

Having consumed an astronomical 500 TWh of electricity in 2024, Big Tech has officially become the planet's primary environmental threat. The infrastructure boom and the construction of gigawatt data centers for LLMs require colossal power capacities that "green" energy is physically unable to provide (only 25 out of 200 companies were able to transition to renewable sources). For Wall Street, this is a fundamental signal: the scaling of artificial intelligence has firmly hit the physical limits of power grids. Energy shortages will soon become the main driver of rising AI computing costs.

Source: ITU / World Benchmarking Alliance / Phys.org