Big Tech Will Not Save Us From the Climate Crisis

https://www.techpolicy.press/big-tech-will-not-save-us-from-the-climate-crisis/

Publish Date: 2026-05-08 09:58:00

On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft may delay or abandon its clean energy targets. This comes less than a month after Microsoft indefinitely paused its purchases of carbon removal credits, a struggling industry the company helped create as part of its “moonshot” goal to match 100 percent of its energy with renewables by 2030. Now, it may abandon this goal completely. The reason for its reversal? Microsoft’s hunger to build more and bigger data centers to power its artificial intelligence (AI) is incompatible with its ability to source renewable energy.

Microsoft’s embrace and subsequent retreat from its commitments highlights the flimsiness of the ‘solutions’ Big Tech pushes to pacify our demands for livable communities, clean air, and drinkable water – and the dangers we face when we rely on their promises. The technologies are unproven, the companies’ initiatives are voluntary, and the longevity of their commitments are guided only by the whims of their leaders.

Before the latest news about Microsoft, their facade was already showing cracks. In early 2025, Microsoft issued an update on its progress towards its moonshot goal; due to AI’s energy needs, the company has “had to acknowledge that the moon has gotten further away.” The same update, though, claimed that AI would soon “begin to rapidly accelerate climate solutions at a scale we’ve not yet seen.” It’s ironic that a year later, AI is causing the company to delay or renege on its renewable energy goal altogether. Now we know the alleged AI climate solutions are not coming to fruition.

Here in South Jersey, we are all too familiar with the impacts of Big Tech’s big greenwashing claims. To supply Microsoft, developers are currently building South Jersey’s first hyperscale data center in Vineland, the city I grew up in, which represents the diverse ecology and communities of our state. Without our input, DataOne and Nebius, Microsoft’s on-the-ground partners, are…

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