• In 2024, Google claimed that their data centers are 1.5x more energy efficient than industry average. • In 2025, Microsoft committed billions to nuclear power for AI workloads. • The data center industry tracks power usage effectiveness to three decimal places and optimizes water usage intensity with machine precision. • We report direct emissions and energy emissions with religious fervor. • These are laudable advances, but these metrics account for only 30 percent of total emissions from the IT sector. • The majority of the emissions are not directly from data centers or the energy they use, but from the end-user devices that actually access the data centers, emissions due to manufacturing the hardware, and software inefficiencies.

Article Summaries:

  • In 2024, Google claimed that their data centers are 1.5x more energy efficient than industry average. In 2025, Microsoft committed billions to nuclear power for AI workloads. The data center industry tracks power usage effectiveness to three decimal places and optimizes water usage intensity with machine precision. We report direct emissions and energy emissions with religious fervor. These are laudable advances, but these metrics account for only 30 percent of total emissions from the IT sector. The majority of the emissions are not directly from data centers or the energy they use, but from

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