Bloomberg News reports that Microsoft may abandon its 2030 clean energy goal as AI increases power consumption.

Bloomberg 'News' reported on Wednesday that Microsoft may delay or abandon its 2030 goal to match its hourly electricity consumption with renewable energy. The report was based on people familiar with the matter.

Microsoft's ambitious climate targets that were set before the AI age and ranked among the industry's most challenging are now no longer feasible because of the expensive and energy-intensive push to build data centers, according to the report.

Bloomberg News reported that the discussions are ongoing and no final decision has yet been made.

Microsoft didn't immediately respond to our request for comment.

Windows, like Alphabet and Amazon, is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in building the artificial intelligence infrastructure required to power its Copilot assistant as well as Azure cloud services.

The new data centres that tech companies will be developing will have a capacity of multiple?gigawatts. One gigawatt of power is equivalent to approximately 750,000 U.S. households.

Nuclear energy has been included in a number of the deals that have been made to supply power for these data centers. The 'rush to power these data centers has sparked a flurry of deals, including those for nuclear energy.

Microsoft has agreed to a power agreement with Constellation Energy in 2024. This deal will help Microsoft resurrect an unit from the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant in Pennsylvania.

(source: Reuters)