AI boom has released same amount of CO2 in 2025 as New York City has, report claims

Record rainfall flooding New York City in October.

The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has caused as much carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere in 2025 as emitted by the whole of New York City, it has been claimed.

The global environmental impact of the rapidly spreading technology has been estimated in research published this week, which also found that AI-related water use now exceeds the entirety of global bottled-water demand.

The figures have been compiled by the Dutch academic Alex de Vries-Gao, the founder of Digiconomist, a company that researches the unintended consequences of digital trends. 

He claimed they were the first attempt to measure the specific effect of AI rather than datacentres in general as the use of chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini soared in 2025.

The figures show the estimated greenhouse gas emissions from AI use are also now equivalent to more than 8% of global aviation emissions. His study used technology companies’ own reporting and he called for stricter requirements for them to be more transparent about their climate impact.

“The environmental cost of this is pretty huge in absolute terms,” he said. “At the moment society is paying for these costs, not the tech companies. The question is: is that fair? If they are reaping the benefits of this technology, why should they not be paying some of the costs?” 

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Mr De Vries-Gao found that the 2025 carbon footprint of AI systems could be as high as 80m tonnes, while the water used could reach 765bn litres. He said it was the first time AI’s water impact had been estimated and showed that AI water use alone was more than a third higher than previous estimates of all data centre water use.

The figures are published in the academic journal Patterns. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said earlier this year that AI-focused data centres draw as much electricity as power-thirsty aluminium smelters and datacentre electricity consumption is expected to more than double by 2030.

“This is yet more evidence that the public is footing the environmental bill for some of the richest companies on Earth,” said Donald Campbell, the director of advocacy at Foxglove, a UK non-profit that campaigns for fairness in tech. “Worse, it is likely just the tip of the iceberg. The  construction frenzy, driven by generative AI, is only getting started."

- The Guardian

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