Tech industry
Tech companies greenhouse gases: Telekom in 18th place
Data centers need a lot of energy and produce a lot of climate -damaging greenhouse gases. What are the biggest issuers? What about German companies?
Among the large tech companies, Deutsche Telekom is in 18th place in the greenhouse gases worldwide. Significantly more climate-damaging gases produce Chinese and American companies, as can be seen from the report of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Geneva. This is driven by applications of artificial intelligence (AI). A total of 200 tech companies are considered. 166 of them have published their greenhouse gas emissions.
By far the most emissions produced Mobile after this line-up, followed by the US giant Amazon. Samsung Electronics from South Korea, followed by China Telecom, China Unicom and the semiconductor company TSMC from Taiwan. Behind it is the Google mother Alphabet and Microsoft. The Facebook group Meta comes in 15th place. The figures relate to 2023 because more current information is not available for all companies.
Electricity requirements of data centers increase rapidly
“The progress in digital innovation – especially in the case of AI – drives energy consumption and global emissions,” said ITU general secretary Doreen Bogdan -Martin. The electricity is used to train, save and operate AI models. The electricity consumption of data centers, which are necessary for AI applications, among other things, rose by around twelve percent a year between 2017 and 2023, four times as quickly as global consumption, the report says.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported in April that data centers had identified a total of 1.5 percent of global electricity consumption worldwide in 2024. She assumes that her needs more than doubled by 2030. 45 percent of the current required for the systems was consumed in the USA, followed by China with 25 and Europe with 15 percent.
Praise for Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom receives good grades in the report with regard to the disclosure of their data, goals and their performance. While Swisscom was the only company to get the highest possible score, Deutsche Telekom was over 90 percent in the climate balance of this report in the climate balance. There are all European companies: Logitech, Proximus, Telefonica, KPN, Ericsson, Nokia.
The ITU takes care of a sustainable development of telecommunications and information systems for everyone within the United Nations. She publishes this report together with the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA). This is a non -profit organization that, among other things, pursues the influence of the 2,000 most important companies on the environment.
dpa
Source: Stern
