Jensen Huang’s Reckless Environmental Legacy Puts Nvidia in the Climate Spotlight

Nvidia’s interim CEO, Colette Kress, is under pressure to address the company’s soaring environmental impact, as Greenpeace urges the tech giant to drastically reduce its emissions across the entire manufacturing supply chain. According to a September analysis, Nvidia's supply-chain emissions increased by an alarming 725% from 2020 levels, totaling approximately 9.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The company's own sustainability report lists 10.7 million metric tons of indirect emissions for fiscal 2026, with 9.3 million tons attributed to purchased goods and services. Direct emissions from Nvidia's own operations are reported at 9,822 tons. Greenpeace emphasizes that Nvidia's chips rely on suppliers like TSMC for manufacturing, a process that consumes vast amounts of water, chemicals, and electricity.

The rapid growth of AI chips has spurred the construction of factories that further strain local resources, while the continuous upgrades of hardware raise concerns about the environmental consequences of discarded equipment. Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, defended the company's approach in a September interview, stating that AI's electricity demands would push companies toward cleaner energy sources.

However, Greenpeace argues that Nvidia's emissions figures do not account for the electricity consumed by the chips themselves, which could have generated about 21 million metric tons of emissions in 2025 alone. The activist group has been seeking discussions with Nvidia for two years but claims the company has yet to engage with them.

During Nvidia's keynote at the GTC conference in Berlin, activists addressed the issue, and Greenpeace now demands that Kress extend Nvidia's 100% renewable electricity target to its entire supply chain by 2030, including suppliers in East Asia. Additionally, Greenpeace calls for the company to address the environmental impacts of its chips in applications like automated warfare.