Why are former Microsoft employees raising the alarm about AI emissions?

When discussing the potential emissions impact of AI, most arguments focus on data centre power usage and energy efficiency gains. But a group of former Microsoft developers are warning about a third factor: enabled emissions.

In a recent article, CSO Futures laid out the main aspects of AI’s climate impacts and why current emissions estimates are still largely unreliable. But since its publication, another element of the equation has grown in prominence with the ramp-up of the enabled emissions campaign by former Microsoft employees Holly and Will Alpine and Drew Wilkinson.

The trio explains that not only are data centre emissions still difficult to quantify, but Big Tech is accelerating fossil fuel production through AI – and asks for more transparency from the likes of Microsoft, Google and Meta on how their technology is enabling fossil fuel emissions.

“While AI’s direct carbon footprint is gaining significant attention, its deliberate role helping oil companies significantly increase fossil fuel expansion—with staggering emissions—remains largely unaddressed,” they warn.

Two AI contracts for 300% of Microsoft emissions 

In an analysis of AI projects for the oil and gas industry, the group finds that two contracts signed by Microsoft with ExxonMobil and Chevron in 2019 to maximise oil and gas production resulted in 57.3 million tonnes of added emissions into the atmosphere in 2020 – three times Microsoft’s stated carbon footprint in 2023.

This suggests that while Big Tech is becoming more transparent about the emissions associated with the data centre growth necessary to support AI applications, the largest climate impact of artificial intelligence is to be found in its application for the benefit of fossil fuel producers.

Reports estimate that Ai technology could boost oil and gas yields by as much as 15%. And despite efforts to power data centres with cleaner energy, BloombergNEF predicts that  64% of incremental energy generation to meet data centre demand will still come from fossil fuels in 2035 – making AI a lucrative opportunity for the sector in more ways than one.

In turn, internal documents revealed by The Atlantic last year show that the fossil fuel sector could represent as much as half of Microsoft’s cloud revenue.

AI ‘locking in decades of future emissions’

In a letter published in the Financial Times on August 7, Holly and Will Alpine warn that AI is already “streamlining extraction, cutting costs, and extending oil and gas operations, in effect locking in decades of future emissions”.

They call out the hypocrisy of the tech sector, which is presenting AI as a climate solution, highlighting an estimated global emissions reduction potential of up to 5.3 gigatonnes by 2030 but say nothing of the extra fossil fuel emissions they also enable through AI.

“This issue cannot continue to fly under the radar,” the Alpines added in the letter.