Last year, Meta signed more clean energy deals than any other company in the world. They are also paying to run 10 gas-fired power plants for their data centers in rural Louisiana. How can both of these statements be true?
This past summer, tech giants released their annual sustainability reports, revealing a grim narrative that contradicts their sustainability campaigns. Google’s emissions rose 18 percent in 2025, the largest increase in the company’s history. Furthermore, Amazon’s emissions climbed 16 percent, now exceeding New Zealand’s total carbon footprint, while Microsoft’s jumped 25 percent, showing that greenhouse-gas (GHG) emission increases are industry-wide.
Despite these companies pledging to be net-zero in the coming decade, the evidence is less optimistic given the proliferation of data centers across America to power new artificial intelligence models. The intuitive takeaway is that these pledges are cheap talk, a way to convince consumers Big Tech is sustainable. This perception is factually incorrect and lets these companies off the hook for what they actually are doing.
Big Tech drives the clean energy market. The big four tech companies (Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft) lead clean investment globally, signing nearly half of all clean power deals last year, according to a report that says most small buyers retreated from investing in the energy transition amid a tariff-heavy America and uprooted tax credits. For example, Microsoft is paying to refurbish a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island, while Google is investing in several small-modular reactors (small-scale nuclear plants) worldwide. The nuclear trend continues, with Meta signing enough agreements to support 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear power. To put these agreements in perspective, tech companies could power all of Sweden with recent nuclear investment. So why are emissions worse than ever?
The answer is simpler than the problem: timing. Google’s first small-modular reactor is scheduled for 2030 and will produce just 50 megawatts. Meta’s reactors are set to arrive two years later, in 2032. Meanwhile, data centers are being built now, and to keep up with demand, tech companies are turning to conventional techniques.
In March, Meta announced that seven gas plants would power its new Hyperion data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, along with three more approved in 2025. The project is expected to expand Louisiana’s grid capacity by 30 percent, but Meta declined to explain how the plan will affect its climate commitments. Overall, Meta estimates that 74 gas plants are planned to power data centers in the United States, and they would emit as much as Australia. But what about the net-zero pledge?
Tech companies are well-resourced to buy renewable energy certificates based on past investments and upcoming plans rather than solely on their current carbon footprint, letting them obscure their nuclear investments as a guarantee of carbon neutrality. In 2022, Meta reported 273 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, calculated by combining its gross emissions and subtracting the net mitigation from renewable technologies it invested in; in total, it emitted 3.8 million metric tons.
Microsoft offers a contemporary example this year. Most tech companies use the certificates Meta bought in 2022 to greenwash their carbon statistics, and Google discontinued this method in 2026. Their recent sustainability report matched this narrative: in 2025-2026, their electricity-specific emissions rose nearly tenfold. Amazon also announced that it matched its global energy use with renewable energy in 2025 while simultaneously increasing its emissions percentage by 34 percent.
Although tech companies are undeniably investing in green tech, specifically nuclear development, letting companies blur the line between clean energy and fossil fuels warps their actual impact and hampers consumers’ ability to discern what they are contributing to. However, solutions can clear the fog.
First, companies should lead reports with location-based emissions, making it harder to bury impacts under broad, nonspecific metrics such as carbon-neutrality promises or numbers that account for inapplicable investments. Second, tech companies should disclose each data center’s carbon footprint, including the fossil fuel plants that power it. Third, organizations behind carbon tracking, such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, should close the loophole and propose alternatives, such as matching clean power to hourly consumption. Experts say this approach would make 100 percent renewable and neutrality claims harder to justify, which may also explain why only 12 percent of tech corporations support it.
Otherwise, the timeline for implementing carbon neutrality in the digital sector will remain in the hands of Big Tech companies, and the communities and regulators living next to these power plants and data centers deserve to know what their grids will realistically look like over the next decade. Big Tech is undeniably adding significant clean energy to the grid, but is also adding immense fossil fuels accurate records of their actual impact, tech companies can keep hiding behind revenue to mislead consumers until their hidden impact becomes visible and irreversible.
The Zeitgeist aims to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board.
