A Fight Over Big Tech’s Emissions Has the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Caught in the Crossfire

Last week’s request Public comment from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) doesn’t seem like a big win for a tech giant with a bare eye. In fact, it seems almost clerical. But for Google and Microsoft, announcement It constitutes a significant victory in the years-long battle against their competitors over how to account for the data center’s carbon emissions and by extension AI.

The announcement shows that the GHGP is one step closer to implementing a mandatory hourly accounting system for electricity emissions — a carbon-accounting system Google and Microsoft have endorsed since 2020 and 2021, respectively.

“We support the proposed Scope 2 updates, which will increase the accuracy and decarbonization impact of carbon inventories,” said Google spokeswoman Mara Harris. Microsoft declined to comment.

As Google celebrates the GHGP’s move, other actors in the emissions space, even those traditionally aligned with Google’s preferred carbon-accounting methods, note that the fight to get here hasn’t been pretty.

“There’s an intensive lobbying effort going on, with these big corporations each amassing considerable fame and money, and they’re getting a little ugly,” said Jesse Jenkins, an associate professor at Princeton University and leader of Google-funded zero-carbon energy systems research and optimization.

out of scope

Scope 2 is a subcategory Used by the GHGP to account for the company’s indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heat, or cooling. For tech giants, Scope 2 emissions increased As AI has drastically increased the power consumption of data centers. As these loads have increased, so has the pressure to find a new way to account for them

GHGP has announced its intention to revise its Scope 2 accounting standards by the end of 2022, eventually a $9.25 million grant from Bezos Earth Fund. Suddenly, the battle between the tech giants spilled out of the white paper and into the real world, with a GHGP-sponsored “working group” set to work out the details of what the new standards should be.

Although some believed it was never a fair fight.

“We had the sense that we would have an arena for ideas that could go back and forth [from the beginning] It was pretty well baked into where it was going,” said one working group member and supporter of an alternative form of Scope 2 accounting, known as “first emission,” who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly.