Last week’s request for public comment resulting from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) does not look to the naked eye like a major victory for the tech giant. In fact, it seems almost clerical. But in the case of Google and Microsoft announcement represents a significant victory in their long-running battle with competitors over how to account for carbon emissions from data centers and, by extension, artificial intelligence.
The announcement shows that GHGP is one step closer to implementing a mandatory hourly accounting method for electricity emissions – a carbon accounting system that Google and Microsoft have been advocating for from 2020 and 2021, respectively.
“We support the proposed updates to Scope 2, which would increase the accuracy and impact of decarbonizing carbon inventories,” says Google spokeswoman Mara Harris. Microsoft declined to comment.
As Google celebrates the GHGP movement, others in the emissions space, even those traditionally aligned with Google’s preferred methodology for accounting for greenhouse gas emissions, are noting that the fight to get here hasn’t been entirely pretty.
“There is intense lobbying going on here, and each of these large corporations has invested a significant amount of reputation and money, and it’s getting more and more ugly,” says Jesse Jenkins, an associate professor at Princeton University and head of the Google-funded ZERO (Zero Carbon Energy Systems Research and Optimization) Lab.
Out of scope
Range 2 is subcategory used by GHGP to account for a company’s indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heat or cooling. For tech giants, scope 2 emissions have increased because artificial intelligence has caused a huge raise in energy consumption in data centers. As these burdens grow, so does the pressure to find a modern way to account for them.
The GHGP announced its intention to review Scope 2 accounting standards in delayed 2022, with final acceptance A $9.25 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund. Suddenly, the battle between the tech giants moved from white papers to the real world, where a GHGP-sponsored “working group” would work out the details of the modern standards.
Some, however, felt it was never a fair fight.
“We understood that we would have an arena for exchanging ideas. It seemed like we would [from the beginning] where we were going, everything was already well prepared,” says a working group member and supporter of an alternative form of Scope 2 accounting known as “emissions first,” who was granted anonymity so he could speak candidly.