Google said it will no longer develop artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help find oil and gas deposits following a report released by Greenpeace on May 19 critical of partnerships between energy and cloud companies.

The tech giant said that, while it will stop building AI and machine learning algorithms to assist in oil and gas extraction, it will honor existing contracts and companies will still have access to Google’s cloud computing platform to run IT operations or store data.

Google is the third-largest cloud company with 8% market share, following Amazon with 33% and Microsoft with 18%.

“While Google still has legacy contracts with oil and gas firms that we hope they will terminate, we welcome Google’s move to no longer create custom solutions for upstream oil and gas extraction,” Liz Jardim, Greenpeace USA Senior Climate Campaigner, said in a statement. “We hope Microsoft and Amazon will quickly follow with commitments to end AI partnerships with oil and gas firms, as these contracts contradict their stated climate goals and accelerate the climate crisis.”

Microsoft, which has said it intends to be carbon-negative by 2030, made no such commitment. The company released a statement on May 19 saying that “the reality is that the world’s energy currently comes from fossil fuels and, as standards of living around the world improve, the world will require even more energy. That makes realizing a zero-carbon future one of the most complex transitions in human history.”

The statement added that “We’re encouraged by the growing number of energy sector commitments to transitioning to cleaner energy and lowering carbon emissions, but they can’t do it alone. Businesses, governments and civil society can rise to the challenge to meet the world’s growing energy demands and achieve a net zero carbon future.”

On its website, Amazon is clear about supporting efforts to mitigate climate change, but also maintains that the energy industry should have the same access to technologies as other industries.

“We will continue to provide cloud services to companies in the energy industry to make their legacy businesses less carbon intensive and help them accelerate development of renewable energy businesses,” the company said. “We support sustainability programs for our own business and work with partners to reduce their demand for carbon fuel sources.”

Greenpeace acknowledged in its report, “Oil in the Cloud: How Tech Companies are Helping Big Oil Profit from Climate Destruction,” that global demand reduction as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has severely curbed U.S. oil and gas output. However, the environmental organization stressed that it was focused on how AI technology would bolster the industry’s ability to kickstart exploration and production when demand returned.

“Although it is difficult to isolate the specific impact of cloud computing and AI on production levels, it is clear that these new information technologies will play a key role in returning the industry to expansion,” Greenpeace said in its report. “Accenture has estimated that advanced analytics and modeling could generate as much as $425 billion in value for the oil and gas sector by 2025. In one case, we found AI technologies could boost production levels by as much as 5%.”

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