Google shifts climate communications away from ‘net zero’ wording

Google is no longer emphasising its goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2030 in its climate communications – calling this ambition a ‘moonshot’ – as AI-driven emissions continue to rise.

Several outlets have reported on the removal of Google’s net zero goal from many parts of its website – the tech giant has since issued a statement saying it “continues to work towards this ambition”, but mentions of net zero are still much harder to find than a few months ago.

This shift in tone is interpreted by many as a sign that Google may be leaning towards ‘greenhushing’ in an effort not to attract the attention of a Trump administration set on curbing climate action. Google wouldn’t be the only one: a Conference Board survey of the 3,000 largest U.S. companies recently found that sustainability disclosures dropped by half in 2025.

But for some observers, the move away from openly talking about a 'net zero by 2030' goal could also be a subtle admission that Google’s AI deployment is hindering its ability to meet its carbon footprint goals, despite its recent claim that Gemini queries only produce 0.03 grams of CO2 equivalent.

“Two weeks ago Google released a report that tried to convince the world that their AI consumed barely any power and sipped just a few teaspoons of water each time you used it. Then last week they sneakily deleted their net-zero goal from the sustainability section of their website. Instead it’s been hidden away making it extremely hard to find. If their report on Gemini had told a truthful story, then this would not have happened,” commented Mark Butcher, digital sustainability and GreenOps expert.

Read also: AI emissions – What we know so far, and more importantly, what we don't know

Google emissions up 51% since 2019

In its 2025 Environmental Report, Google noted that the total emissions included in its ‘carbon reduction moonshot’ – ie, its SBTi-approved target of reducing absolute combined scope 1, 2 (market-based) and 3 emissions by 50% by 2030 – are on a steep upward trajectory.

Its ‘ambition-based emissions’ stood at 11.5 million tCO2e in 2024 – a 51% increase compared to its 2019 baseline, despite a recent decrease in Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Scope 3 emissions increased by 22% in 2024 alone, “primarily due to increases in data centre capacity delivery (i.e., emissions generated from the manufacturing and assembly of technical infrastructure hardware—including for AI—and their logistics, as well as from data center construction)”.

“We’re at an extraordinary inflection point, not just for our company specifically, but for the technology industry as a whole—driven by the rapid growth of AI. This evolving landscape introduces significant uncertainties that may impact our future trajectories and the precision of our forecasting,” the company warns.

Google’s carbon-free electricity pledge

Google also pledged in 2020 to run all of its data centres and office campuses worldwide on 24/7 carbon-free electricity by 2030, and says it has achieved 66% of this goal as of 2024, through a mixture of renewable PPAs, renewable energy certificates, on-site renewable electricity generation, and renewable electricity in the grids where facilities are located.

In recent months, the company has also invested in nuclear power facilities to support this goal: in October 2024, it signed the first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors (SMR) to be developed by Kairos Power.

In March this year, Google was also part of a group of Big Tech firms and countries pledging to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050.