Three years ago, Google set an ambitious plan to address climate change by going ‘net zero’, meaning it would release no more climate-changing gases into the air than it removes, by 2030. But a report from the company on Tuesday shows it is nowhere near meeting that goal. Rather than declining, its emissions grew 13 per cent in 2023 over the year before. Compared to its baseline year of 2019, emissions have soared 48 per cent. Google cited artificial intelligence (AI) and the demand it puts on data centres, which require massive amounts of electricity, for last year’s growth. Making that elect…