Pollution watchdog drops proposed ruling on data center CO2 emissions after tech lobbying

A pollution watchdog has dropped a proposed ruling that could have cut CO2 emissions from data centers "dozens of times faster" than the current system, The Financial Times reports.

Following lobbying by tech industry groups, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) decided to not recommend a protocol that would have made it more difficult for tech companies to use clean energy investments to offset fossil fuel pollution.

To capitalize on the the AI boom, tech companies like Amazon and Meta have been building enormous data centers around the US. There's often not enough electricity produced locally to power those facilities, so firms have been installing controversial, highly-polluting gas turbines to make up the difference.

In order to avoid pollution charges, tech giants say they're offsetting fossil fuel generation with investments in wind, solar and other forms of green power. They use certificates to offset those emissions backed by net-zero energy projects, even if those projects are located in other states or regions and generate the power at a different time. For instance, a fossil-fuel powered Texas data centre running at night can offset CO2 pollution via certificates issued when solar energy is purchased during the day in California.

However, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GGP) oversight body (used by Europe and California) said that both the fossil fuel power and offsetting green energy should be produced in the same market at around the same time. That would help ensure accurate reporting and create a "credible link" between companies and their energy sources, the GGP said. Based on that research, SBTi proposed that tech companies use certificates that represent clean energy produced in the same time frame as the fossil-fuel energy consumed.

In response, companies with nearly $5 trillion in revenue including Apple, Amazon and GM, launched a lobbying effort called "May not Shall" arguing that time- and location-based energy rules be optional. Such rules were onerous and could discourage clean energy investments, they claimed. Google, by contrast, argued in favor of time-based (hourly) clean-energy matching (Google is the largest corporate renewable energy buyer in the world by far).

Multiple research groups, including Princeton University's Low-Carbon Technology Consortium and the European Union have argued that hourly energy offset accounting could cut CO2 emissions significantly quicker than the current system.