A Fight Over Big Tech’s Emissions Has the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Caught in the Crossfire
Last week's request for public comment of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) does not look like a big win for a tech giant with the naked eye. In fact, it seems almost clerical. But for Google and Microsoft, the announcement represents a significant win in its years-long battle against its competitors over how to account for the carbon emissions of data centers and, by extension, AI.
The announcement shows that the GHGP is one step closer to implementing a mandatory hourly calculation method for electricity emissions – a carbon calculation system that Google and Microsoft have been advocating since 2020 and 2021 respectively.
“We support the proposed Scope 2 updates, which would increase the accuracy and the decarbonization impact of carbon inventories,” says Google spokeswoman Mara Harris. Microsoft declined to comment.
While Google celebrates the GHGP's move, other actors in the emissions space, even those traditionally aligned with Google's preferred method of carbon accounting, note that the struggle to get here was not all pretty.
“There's an intense lobbying effort going on here, one where these big companies have each invested a lot of reputation and money, and they're getting a little ugly,” says Jesse Jenkins, an associate professor at Princeton University and the leader of the Google-funded ZERO (Zero-Carbon Energy Systems Research and Optimization) Laboratory.
Out of Scope
Scope 2 is a subcategory used by the GHGP to account for a company's indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heat or cooling. For tech giants, Scope 2 emissions have pushed up as AI has driven massive growth in data center energy use. As these loads have grown, so has the pressure to find a new way to account for them.
The GHGP announced its intentions to revise its Scope 2 accounting standards by the end of 2022, ultimately accepting a $9.25 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund. Suddenly, the battle between tech giants had spilled out of the white papers and into the real world, with a GHGP-sponsored “working group” set up to hammer out the details of what the new standards should be.
However, some believed it was never a fair fight.
“Our understanding was that we would have an arena for ideas to go back and forth. It seemed like it would [from the beginning] it was pretty well baked where it was going to go,” says a working group member and proponent of an alternative form of Scope 2 accounting, known as “emission first,” who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
