By Anna Desmarais
Publication Date: 2026-02-17 05:00:00
Published on
A new report casts serious doubt on claims made by some artificial intelligence (AI) companies that their products can significantly reduce carbon emissions.
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Estimates of the impact of AI on the climate vary widely. A study published in January in the journal Patterns found that data centers alone could have emitted between 32.6 and 79.7 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2025, roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of a small European country.
Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has suggested that AI could reduce global emissions by up to 5 percent by 2035 by accelerating innovation in the energy sector and potentially offsetting emissions caused by data centers. For…