Weeks after ChatGPT was unleashed on the world in November 2022, sustainability executives at Microsoft Corp. realized they had a big problem. On the tech giant’s 500-acre campus in Redmond, Washington, teams began holding regular “triage” meetings to confront serious questions posed by the artificial intelligence boom: Where would the company find the gigawatts — just one gigawatt can power nearly 750,000 US homes — needed for data centers? And how could Microsoft possibly secure that extra energy while still making progress toward a long-standing goal of going carbon-negative? The AI discussions were “interesting and terrifying all at the same time,” said Brian Janous, who served until August 2023 as Microsoft’s vice president of energy. Microsoft and other major tech companies, he said, had to “look at the climate commitments they set and say, ‘Can I still do this?’”

Full commentary : How Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google are managing the strain of AI’s increased energy demand with their promises of net-zero carbon emissions.