Tech’s emissions may be way higher than disclosed due to ‘creative accounting’ of carbon

Accounting for the emissions of a global tech empire is not a simple task, and what industry standards we do have for disclosure may allow tech companies to systematically understate their carbon footprint.

A Guardian report compares official declarations of carbon emissions (including what amount to offsets purchased elsewhere) with “location-based” emissions, another standard metric that more directly represents datacenter output — and concludes real emissions are many times what’s reported.

What’s for certain: These “renewable energy certificates” are arguably painting a misleading picture of the actual — increasing — carbon output of the tech sector.