Google 2025 environmental report: what Google's 2026 report says about Scope 3, electricity and carbon removal

Google used 37% more electricity in 2025 than it did a year earlier. Its market-based operational emissions still fell by 2%, but its wider ambition-based footprint rose by 18% to about 14.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The figures appear in Google's 2026 Environmental Report, published on 30 June 2026 and covering the 2025 fiscal year. Clean-power procurement improved the operating numbers; growth in data centres, chips, construction and supply chains still increased the total.

Google's 2025 footprint in six figures

Operational emissions fell, but the full footprint rose

Google's report draws a sharp distinction between operations and the wider value chain. It says operational emissions, meaning Scope 1 plus Scope 2 on a market-based basis, fell 2% in 2025 even as electricity demand rose 37%. Clean-power procurement therefore kept the reported operating footprint from rising with power use.

But that is not the same as saying Google's climate impact fell overall. The report's own lead carbon metric, total ambition-based emissions, rose to about 14.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. The same report says that figure was 18% higher than 2024 and 81% above the 2019 base year.

Taken together, the figures show how operational decarbonisation can coexist with a larger total footprint when supply chains, construction and computing demand are expanding quickly enough.

These metrics answer different questions. Operational emissions describe the company's direct operations and market-based electricity accounting. The ambition-based total shows whether the entire footprint covered by Google's net-zero pathway is falling. The same distinction is central when comparing other big tech sustainability reports.

Construction and supply chains drove Scope 3 higher

Google's report says roughly 11.6 million tonnes of its 2025 ambition-based footprint came from Scope 3 emissions. That is about four-fifths of the total. The report attributes the year-on-year rise mainly to supply-chain activity needed to support business growth.

A company can improve the carbon intensity of its direct operations and still have a deteriorating total footprint if the infrastructure behind that growth is emissions-heavy. Google's own report says data-centre construction reached about 2.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025, or about 20% of total ambition-based Scope 3 emissions.

Scope 1 at Google is comparatively small. Scope 2 is materially shaped by clean-energy procurement choices. Scope 3 is where the harder physical growth problem shows up: purchased goods and services, capital goods, transport and the infrastructure needed to support more computing.

The operational reduction is genuine within its stated boundary. Scope 3 prevents it from becoming a company-wide reduction: the infrastructure supporting Google's growth added more emissions than cleaner operations removed.

Annual renewable matching did not make every hour carbon-free

Google says it matched 100% of its electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases on a global annual basis for the ninth consecutive year. On its own terms, that is true. But it does not mean every Google facility ran on carbon-free electricity every hour.

The report says annual matching can still leave local growth exposed to fossil-heavy grids, particularly when demand is rising quickly. Google therefore continues to describe 24/7 carbon-free energy as a longer-term ambition rather than a completed achievement.

Three figures make the accounting boundary visible: electricity consumption rose 37% in 2025 while Scope 2 market-based emissions fell 3%, but Scope 2 location-based emissions, which reflect the average carbon intensity of the grids where power was actually consumed, rose to 15.15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The GHG Protocol requires both views because they are not interchangeable. The market-based number shows the effect of contractual clean-energy procurement. The location-based number shows the carbon intensity of the grid electricity behind the operations themselves.

Google says 81% of its Scope 2 market-based reductions in 2025 came from long-term clean-energy agreements, with the remaining 19% coming from Granular Certificates bought from the marketplace. The company is not relying entirely on short-term certificate purchases, although certificates still play a bridging role where local clean-energy supply has not caught up with demand.

Carbon removal contracts are not the reason the 2025 footprint fell

Carbon removal creates a separate accounting question.

Google says it signed 16 deals in 2025 representing more than $100 million for roughly 600,000 tonnes of carbon removal credits over the coming years. It also says it contracted for 1 million tonnes of superpollutant credits and ended 2025 with a cumulative contracted carbon removal portfolio above 1.3 million tonnes.

These are forward contracts covering coming years, not tonnes that cancel the 2025 emissions total. Google's stated approach prioritises emissions reductions and places removal later in the pathway, where it is intended to neutralise emissions that remain.

The immediate challenge is still reducing the absolute emissions created by a growing business. Our guide to carbon removal credits explains how durability, delivery and retirement affect what a buyer can claim.

Removal credits should also be separated from Google's clean-energy certificates. The certificates help shape the market-based Scope 2 figure, while removal deals form part of the longer-term net-zero pathway. They address different parts of the climate claim.

AI growth is becoming an infrastructure problem

Google says its electricity demand has increased by more than 250% since 2019, driven by Google Cloud, Search, YouTube and artificial-intelligence capabilities. Freshwater consumption rose 37% in 2025, while water stewardship projects replenished about 7.7 billion gallons, equivalent to 78% of the year's freshwater consumption.

Those figures widen the question beyond a cleaner power contract. Google's environmental performance now depends partly on whether grids, water systems and supply chains can absorb hyperscale growth without pushing costs elsewhere. The wider investment pressure is visible in the International Energy Agency's World Energy Investment 2026 figures, where electricity infrastructure and clean technology increasingly dominate capital spending.

Clean procurement is not yet outrunning growth

Google bought substantially more clean energy in 2025 and reduced its market-based operational emissions slightly. Total ambition-based emissions nevertheless rose, with Scope 3 responsible for roughly four-fifths of the footprint. The removal portfolio belongs to future neutralisation and market development, not the explanation for the 2025 result.

Google's next reports will show whether clean-power procurement and efficiency can catch up with the expansion of its computing infrastructure. In 2025 they improved the operating boundary, but they did not pull the company's absolute footprint down.

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Official sources

• Google Sustainability: 2026 Environmental Report landing page
• Google Sustainability: 2026 Environmental Report PDF
• Feature image: Google data center and wind turbines in Eemshaven by Wvdp, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0