Azernews.Az

By Alimat Aliyeva

Microsoft is reportedly considering scaling back—or even abandoning—its commitment to source all of its electricity from carbon-free energy around the clock by 2030. The company’s ambitious climate pledge, made before the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, is now being reassessed as the energy demands of modern computing grow far beyond earlier expectations, AzerNEWS reports.

The rapid expansion of AI-driven infrastructure, including services like the Copilot assistant and the Azure cloud platform, has pushed Microsoft—and its competitors such as Amazon and Alphabet—to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in new, highly energy-intensive data centers. These facilities are essential for training and running large AI models, but they require enormous amounts of electricity, raising questions about how realistic earlier sustainability targets remain.

Some of the newest data centers under development are expected to reach capacities measured in multiple gigawatts. To put this into perspective, just one gigawatt of electricity can power roughly 750,000 homes in the United States. As a result, the overall electricity demand from the tech sector is rising at an unprecedented pace.

This surge has triggered a wave of investment activity in energy infrastructure, including renewed interest in nuclear power projects, which can provide large-scale, low-carbon baseload energy. At the same time, natural gas is also seeing increased demand, as some industry leaders argue it can be deployed more quickly and flexibly than renewable alternatives like wind or solar.

Interestingly, this shift highlights a growing tension in the AI era: the race to build more powerful digital systems is colliding with global climate goals. Some analysts suggest that future data centers may increasingly be built near dedicated energy sources—such as small modular nuclear reactors or large renewable “energy hubs”—effectively reshaping how and where the digital economy grows.