Under cofounder Jensen Huang, Nvidia has rotate into the motor for the AI surge — and among the tech industry’s biggest ecological liabilities. Its sought-after chips have triggered a new motion of water- and chemical-intensive factories, drained power grids from inner enormous data centers, and set the phase for a looming e-waste problem.
Under Huang’s leadership, Nvidia conflicted alongside ecological groups seeking to clasp the business accountable for its so-called “hidden” emissions. Huang has talked up the idea of using AI to combat climate alter during his company’s provision sequence emissions ballooned. Nvidia’s investments, meanwhile, have supported the buildout of data centers that have sparked serious backlash for the two their local and earth impact. Now, following the CEO’s shocking resignation amid a sprawling sex-and-espionage scandal, advocates are urging Nvidia to rotate the page.
He compared AI to a surgeon who has “to cut you open to preserve you.”
“Jensen Huang has unsuccessful to put climate duty at the bosom of the company’s growth strategy, to dilatory downward the unchecked enlargement of data centres or to forestall its chips from being deployed in unethical applications akin automated warfare,” Avex Li, Greenpeace East Asia’s project guide for AI provision sequence campaign, stated in a press release Thursday. The institution is now pushing interim CEO Colette Kress to commit Nvidia to decarbonizing by investing in renewable energy, as fine as ensuring its innovation is used in a way that “respects individual rights.” Nvidia didn’t immediately react to requests for comment from The Verge.
Huang has projected optimism concerning how AI can boost the acceptance of renewable energy, equal as the planet-heating emissions of tech companies — including his own — have grown in the generative AI era. “If you desire to rotate a border on climate change, if you desire a forthcoming that’s sustainable, lean into A.I. It is the finest chance we have to get there,” Huang stated in a September event of The Ezra Klein Show, arguing that power petition for AI is foremost companies to buy additional sustainable energy.
In the identical interview, however, he admitted data centers volition depend on additional fossil fuels in the near term, and that construction up the infrastructure for AI will apt outcome in “an enormous amount of ache and suffering.” He compared AI to a surgeon who has “to cut you open to preserve you.”
Nvidia’s supply-chain emissions have grown 725 percent since 2020, according to an analysis of the company’s community disclosures by investigation expert Ketan Joshi and multiple ecological organizations, including Greenpeace and Climate Action Against Disinformation, published in September. It’s an addition of concerning 9.4 myriad metric lots of planet-heating pollution, roughly equivalent to the emissions from nearly 25 gas flora complete a year. Supply sequence emissions the business disclosed for financial twelvemonth 2026 reached about 10.7 myriad metric lots of CO2, according to Nvidia’s latest sustainability report.
Joshi and his co-authors approximated how much greenhouse gas contamination comes from the use of chips the business sells, a category Nvidia doesn’t contain in its sustainability reports. Those emissions could have reached 21 myriad metric lots in 2025, according to the report, according to estimated part power consumption. That flat of contamination puts Nvidia on par alongside Russia’s state-owned charcoal company, according to Joshi.
Those “indirect” emissions — from its provision sequence and the use of its products — create up the bulk of Nvidia’s climate impact. The carbon footprint of accommodation Nvidia really owns and operates looks much smaller in difference since Nvidia designs chips that another companies akin TSMC afterward manufacture. Greenhouse gas emissions coming immediately from Nvidia-operated accommodation and vehicles lone reached 9,822 metric lots in financial twelvemonth 2026, the company’s sustainability report shows. And in 2025, the business reached a goal of matching 100 percent of its facilities’ power use alongside spotless energy purchases.
Greenpeace wants Nvidia to broaden that goal to its complete manufacturing provision chain. When Greenpeace activists disrupted Huang’s speech at Nvidia GTC in Berlin final month, he responded onstage by saying, “I’ll conversation to you guys afterward … All crucial issues, but let me get through my keynote.” In the Thursday press release, Greenpeace says Nvidia has yet to encounter alongside Greenpeace notwithstanding the organization’s attempts to “seek dialogue” alongside the business complete the former two years.
“One of Huang’s defining legacies is inflating a speculative AI bubble, flowing billions of dollars into infrastructure alongside small regard for the real-world consequences inflicted on local communities and the climate,” Katrin Wu, Big Tech advocate at Greenpeace International, stated in an email to The Verge. “Huang may be gone, but the ‘tech colonialism’ Nvidia perpetuates continues.”
“Huang may be gone, but the ‘tech colonialism’ Nvidia perpetuates continues.”
Beyond Nvidia’s day-to-day operations, Huang threw his importance about as the CEO of among the world’s most precious companies — chumming it up alongside President Donald Trump and lobbying for the US to authorize revenue of its mighty chips to China. The company’s power on the earth economics extended beyond chips as it invested in data centers stocking its GPUs.
And alongside power provision frequently the thorniest bottleneck to construction additional and bigger data centers, Nvidia’s lengthy tendrils reached into the energy sector as well. NVentures, the company’s project chief arm, has funded power division recycling business Redwood Materials and startups evolving AI tools to optimize power grids and make data centers additional responsive to fluctuations in energy demand.
Nvidia joined one of those startups, Emerald AI, alongside alongside Google to cofound the AI Energy Management Alliance (AEMA) in September. The alliance advocates for strategies that tech companies advance as ways to keep data centers from overwhelming power grids or raising usefulness bills for another customers, including generating power on-site and making “flexible” accommodation that can intermission operations during times of highest energy demand. Notably, several environmental groups contend that those measures power fair assistance data centers arrive online faster without completely insulating households from the effect that rising power petition has on their air norm or usefulness bills.
Whether Nvidia’s ecological footprint shrinks or expands from current volition depend on whoever steps in to inhabit Huang’s shoes. Over the years, Greenpeace and another ecological groups have pointed out that notwithstanding having an outsize effect on the environment, Nvidia doesn’t necessarily arrive under the identical community scrutiny as additional consumer-facing brands akin Apple or Google. Huang’s exploits have drive the business into a new benevolent of spotlight, however, fair as data centers increasingly visage backlash from nearby communities. Nvidia won’t be capable to conceal from the glare.
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