GENEVA (dpa-AFX) - According to a UN report, Deutsche Telekom ranks 18th among large tech companies worldwide in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Chinese and American companies in particular produce significantly more climate-damaging gases, according to the report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva. This is driven by applications of artificial intelligence (AI). A total of 200 tech companies were examined, 166 of which have published their greenhouse gas emissions.
According to this list, China Mobile produced by far the most emissions, followed by US giant Amazon. Samsung Electronics from South Korea was significantly lower, followed by China Telecom, China Unicom, and the semiconductor company TSMC from Taiwan. Behind them are Google's parent company Alphabet and Microsoft. The Facebook group Meta comes in 15th place. The figures refer to the year 2023 because more recent data was not available for all companies.
Power consumption of data centers is rising rapidly
"Advances in digital innovation – particularly in AI – are driving up energy consumption and global emissions," said ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin. The electricity is needed to train, store, and operate AI models. The report states that the electricity consumption of data centers, which are needed for AI applications, among other things, rose by around 12 percent per year between 2017 and 2023, four times faster than global consumption.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported in April that data centers would account for a total of 1.5 percent of global electricity consumption worldwide in 2024. It expects their demand to more than double by 2030. Forty-five percent of the electricity required for the facilities was consumed in the US, followed by China with 25 percent and Europe with 15 percent.
Praise for Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom receives good marks in the report for its disclosure of data, targets, and performance. While Swisscom was the only company to receive the highest possible score, Deutsche Telekom was among six others to achieve a climate performance score of over 90 percent in this report. These are all European companies: Logitech, Proximus, Telefonica, KPN, Ericsson, and Nokia.
The ITU is responsible within the United Nations for the sustainable development of telecommunications and information systems for all. It publishes this report together with the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA). This is a non-profit organization that, among other things, tracks the impact of the 2,000 most important companies on the environment.
