The article does a good job of clearly stating that the 48% is compared to 2019, but words like "surge" and "spike" do not closely match that factual basis and

The article does a good job of clearly stating that the 48% is compared to 2019, but words like "surge" and "spike" do not closely match that factual basis and imho are misleading. Attributing the 48% to AI specifically is largely baseless though. From my skim, the Google report does not make any specific claims about the increase in datacenter emission coming from AI. The closest claims are on page 12 where "the rapid advancement of AI has brought necessary increased attention to its energy consumption and resource demands" is juxtaposed with "total data center electricity consumption grew 17%" In particular the third "key point" seems highly misleading. > The company attributed the emissions spike to an increase in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions driven by rapid advancements in and demand for AI. The word "spike" does not occur in the document and the 48% number is never close to a mention of AI. While the 17% "spike" may have been attributed to AI by Google, I think it is clear the document does not attribute the 48% to AI.