Under cofounder Jensen Huang, Nvidia has become the engine for the AI boom — and one of the tech industry’s biggest environmental liabilities. Its sought-after chips have triggered a new wave of water- and chemical-intensive factories, drained power grids from inside massive data centers, and set the stage for a looming e-waste problem.
Under Huang’s leadership, Nvidia clashed with environmental groups seeking to hold the company accountable for its so-called “hidden” emissions. Huang has talked up the idea of using AI to fight climate change while his company’s supply chain emissions ballooned. Nvidia’s investments, meanwhile, have supported the buildout of data centers that have sparked intense backlash for both their local and global impact. Now, after the CEO’s shocking resignation amid a sprawling sex-and-espionage scandal, advocates 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 heart of the company’s growth strategy, to slow down the unchecked expansion of data centres or to prevent its chips from being deployed in unethical applications like automated warfare,” Avex Li, Greenpeace East Asia’s project lead for AI supply chain campaign, said in a press release Thursday. The organization is now pushing interim CEO Colette Kress to commit Nvidia to decarbonizing by investing in renewable energy, as well as ensuring its technology is used in a way that “respects human rights.” Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from The Verge.
Huang has projected optimism about how AI can boost the adoption of renewable energy, even as the planet-heating emissions of tech companies — including his own — have grown in the generative AI era. “If you want to turn a corner on climate change, if you want a future that’s sustainable, lean into A.I. It is the best opportunity we have to get there,” Huang said in a September episode of The Ezra Klein Show, arguing that electricity demand for AI is leading companies to buy more sustainable energy.
In the same interview, however, he admitted data centers will rely on more fossil fuels in the near term, and that building up 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 grown 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. It’s an increase of about 9.4 million metric tons of planet-heating pollution, roughly equivalent to the emissions from nearly 25 gas plants over a year. Supply chain emissions the company disclosed for fiscal year 2026 reached around 10.7 million metric tons of CO2, according to Nvidia’s latest sustainability report.
Joshi and his co-authors approximated how much greenhouse gas pollution comes from the use of chips the company sells, a category Nvidia doesn’t include in its sustainability reports. Those emissions could have reached 21 million metric tons in 2025, according to the report, based on estimated chip power 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 bulk of Nvidia’s climate impact. The carbon footprint of facilities Nvidia actually owns and operates looks much smaller in comparison because Nvidia designs chips that other companies like TSMC then manufacture. Greenhouse gas emissions coming directly from Nvidia-operated facilities and vehicles only reached 9,822 metric tons in fiscal year 2026, the company’s sustainability report shows. And in 2025, the company reached a 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 disrupted Huang’s speech at Nvidia GTC in Berlin last month, he responded onstage by saying, “I’ll talk to you guys later … All important issues, but let me get through my keynote.” In the Thursday 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, pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure with little regard for the real-world consequences inflicted on local communities and the climate,” Katrin Wu, Big Tech campaigner at Greenpeace International, said 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 weight around as the CEO of one of the world’s most valuable companies — chumming it up with President Donald Trump and lobbying for the US 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 stocking its GPUs.
And with electricity supply often the thorniest bottleneck to building more and bigger 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 AI 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 cofound the AI Energy Management Alliance (AEMA) in September. The alliance advocates for strategies that tech companies promote as ways to keep data centers from overwhelming power grids or raising utility bills for other customers, including generating power on-site and making “flexible” facilities that can pause operations during times of peak energy demand. Notably, some environmental groups argue that those measures might just help data centers come online faster without fully insulating households from the impact that rising electricity demand has on their air quality or utility bills.
Whether Nvidia’s environmental footprint shrinks or expands from here will depend on whoever steps in to fill Huang’s shoes. Over the years, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have pointed out that despite having an outsize impact on the environment, Nvidia doesn’t necessarily come under the same public scrutiny as more consumer-facing brands like Apple or Google. Huang’s exploits have thrust the company into a new kind of spotlight, however, just as data centers increasingly face backlash from nearby communities. Nvidia won’t be able to hide from the glare.