Under co-founder Jensen Huang, Nvidia has become the driving force behind the AI boom and one of the tech industry’s biggest environmental liabilities. Its coveted chips have unleashed a new wave of water- and chemical-intensive factories, strained power grids inside huge data centers and set the stage for a looming e-waste problem.
Under Huang’s leadership, Nvidia clashed with environmental groups that sought to hold the company accountable for its so-called “hidden” emissions. Huang has talked about the idea of using AI to fight climate change as his company’s supply chain emissions skyrocketed. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s investments have supported the construction of data centers that have sparked intense backlash for their impact both locally and globally. Now, after the CEO’s shocking resignation amid a sprawling sex and spy scandal, his defenders are urging Nvidia to turn the page.
He compared AI to a surgeon who has to “cut you open to save you.”
“Jensen Huang has failed to put climate responsibility at the center of the company’s growth strategy, to curb the rampant expansion of data centers or to prevent its chips from being deployed in unethical applications such as automated warfare,” Avex Li, Greenpeace’s East Asia project leader for the AI supply chain campaign, said in a press release on Thursday. The organization is now pressing interim CEO Colette Kress to commit Nvidia to decarbonization by investing in renewable energy, as well as ensuring its technology is used in a way that “respects human rights.” Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The edge.
Huang has projected optimism about how AI can boost the adoption of renewable energy, even as planet-warming emissions from tech companies (including his) have increased in the era of generative AI. “If you want to turn a corner on climate change, if you want a future that is sustainable, lean on AI. It’s the best chance we have to get there,” Huang said in a September episode of The Ezra Klein Showarguing that electricity demand for AI is leading companies to purchase more sustainable energy.
However, in the same interview he admitted that data centers will become more reliant on fossil fuels in the short term, and that building the infrastructure for AI will likely result in “an enormous amount of pain and suffering.” He compared AI to a surgeon who has to “cut you open to save you.”
Nvidia’s supply chain emissions have increased 725 percent since 2020, according to an analysis of the company’s public disclosures by research analyst Ketan Joshi and several environmental organizations, including Greenpeace and Climate Action Against Disinformation, published in September. That’s an increase of about 9.4 million metric tons of planet-warming pollution, roughly equivalent to the emissions of nearly 25 gas plants over a year. The company’s disclosed supply chain emissions for fiscal 2026 reached about 10.7 million metric tons of CO2, according to Nvidia’s latest sustainability report.
Joshi and his co-authors estimated how much greenhouse gas pollution comes from using chips the company sells, a category that Nvidia does not include in its sustainability reports. Those emissions could have reached 21 million metric tons by 2025, the report said, based on the chips’ estimated energy consumption. That level of pollution puts Nvidia on par with Russia’s state-owned coal company, according to Joshi.
Those “indirect” emissions (from its supply chain and the use of its products) make up the majority of Nvidia’s climate impact. The carbon footprint of the facilities that Nvidia actually owns and operates seems much smaller in comparison because Nvidia designs chips that are then manufactured by other companies like TSMC. Greenhouse gas emissions coming directly from Nvidia-operated facilities and vehicles alone reached 9,822 metric tons in fiscal 2026, the company’s sustainability report shows. And in 2025, the company reached the goal of matching 100 percent of its facilities’ electricity use with clean energy purchases.
Greenpeace wants Nvidia to extend that goal to its entire manufacturing supply chain. When Greenpeace activists interrupted Huang’s speech at Nvidia GTC in Berlin last month, he responded on stage by saying, “I’ll talk to you later… These are all important topics, but let me finish my keynote speech.” In Thursday’s press release, Greenpeace says Nvidia has yet to meet with Greenpeace despite the organization’s attempts to “seek dialogue” with the company over the past two years.
“One of Huang’s defining legacies is inflating a speculative AI bubble, investing billions of dollars in infrastructure without regard for the real-world consequences inflicted on local communities and the climate,” Katrin Wu, a Big Tech campaigner at Greenpeace International, said in an email to The edge. “Huang may be gone, but the ‘technological colonialism’ that Nvidia perpetuates continues.”
“Huang may be gone, but the ‘technological colonialism’ that Nvidia perpetuates continues.”
Beyond Nvidia’s day-to-day operations, Huang exerted his influence as CEO of one of the world’s most valuable companies, befriending President Donald Trump and pushing for the United States to allow sales of its powerful chips to China. The company’s influence on the global economy extended beyond chips, as it invested in data centers that stored its GPUs.
And since electricity supply is often the thorniest bottleneck for building more and larger data centers, Nvidia’s long tendrils reached into the energy sector as well. NVentures, the company’s venture capital arm, has funded battery recycling company Redwood Materials and startups developing artificial intelligence tools to optimize power grids and make data centers more responsive to fluctuations in energy demand.
Nvidia joined one of those startups, Emerald AI, along with Google to co-found the AI Energy Management Alliance (AEMA) in September. The alliance advocates for strategies that technology companies promote as ways to prevent data centers from overwhelming power grids or increasing other customers’ utility bills, including on-site power generation and creating “flexible” facilities that can pause operations during times of peak power demand. In particular, some environmental groups argue that such measures could simply help data centers come online faster without completely insulating households from the impact that rising electricity demand has on air quality or utility bills.
Whether Nvidia’s environmental footprint shrinks or expands from now on will depend on who takes Huang’s place. Over the years, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have pointed out that, despite having a huge impact on the environment, Nvidia is not necessarily under the same public scrutiny as more consumer-oriented brands like Apple or Google. However, Huang’s exploits have thrust the company into a new kind of spotlight, just as data centers face increasing backlash from nearby communities. Nvidia won’t be able to hide from the glare.
