The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday edition that tech companies' aggressive expansion into artificial intelligence is having an undisclosed impact on the planet. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post reports that Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are hiding their true carbon footprints by purchasing credits linked to electricity usage, which inaccurately eliminate millions of tons of planet-warming emissions from their carbon records. Recently, Microsoft reported that its emissions are 30 per cent higher today than in 2020, when it set a goal to become carbon negative. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet's Google are following the accounting rules set out under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol that was first developed in 2001. Those disclosures underpin the analyses that investors rely on to make decisions about what counts as a green company. While the protocol has received small updates over the years, it is due for a big update and experts are working to propose changes. All the big tech companies are now involved in lobbying on those changes. "Standards need to evolve, because measuring carbon emissions isn't an exact science," said Google's Michael Terrell. "It's continuing to improve and we're committed to helping improve it."