Al Gore believes the environmental threat from artificial intelligence is not the primary concern. He argues that the real danger lies in warnings issued by industry leaders regarding the technology’s capabilities.
The emissions argument
During an interview with TechCrunch alongside Lila Preston, head of growth equity at Generation Investment Management, Gore stated that emissions from AI data centres should not be the main worry. He noted that the total output from all such facilities combined is only a fraction of emissions from uncovered landfills globally.
He added that a comparable energy build-out is tied to air conditioning, which receives far less attention. The International Energy Agency estimates global air conditioning already consumes more electricity annually than the entire European Union. Ownership remains under 15% across the hottest, fastest-growing parts of the world. That demand is expected to triple by 2050, putting far more pressure on the grid than AI data centres over the same period.
Gore is not dismissive of concerns about how these facilities are powered. He stated it is a matter of deep concern that some hyperscalers are jumping into new methane turbines. He explained that building new gas plants to meet demand locks in decades more of fossil fuel generation.
“I much prefer those that are supplying their energy needs with renewables and batteries,” he said. He expects more companies to move inexorably in that direction simply because renewables are increasingly the cheapest option available.
Public anxiety
Gore thinks the public backlash at planning-commission meetings has less to do with carbon emissions than with anxiety over automation upending society in the not-too-distant future.
“I think that part of the reason for the growing bipartisan opposition to data centers in so many parts of the U.S. is being driven by the underlying concerns about job losses and some of the other threats that experts inside OpenAI and inside Anthropic have been trying to alert the public to,” he said.
Industry warnings
The conversation turned to the wave of warnings from AI industry leaders that has dominated headlines over the last week. President Trump and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared a laugh at their expense on Monday during a conference in Los Angeles. Trump suggested that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s public call to slow the pace of capability gains, quickly seconded by Sam Altman and Elon Musk, was a “hoax”.
Gore said he takes the warnings at face value. “I think we went through a phase where some cynically suspected that the apocalyptic warnings were some kind of bizarre marketing strategy. If that was ever the case, I don’t think it is now,” he said.
“I do think that Dario Amodei is very sincere, and I think that Sam Altman and Elon Musk were sincere in seconding [Amodei’s] warning of a few days ago,” he added. Gore invoked Maya Angelou’s well-known line: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Part of what’s changed his calculus, he said, is recent, concrete behaviour from AI systems themselves. He pointed to “the recent example of models escaping confinement, collaborating secretly, covering their tracks, engaging in deceptive behavior.” He noted that Anthropic has said it stopped instances of Claude being used to help develop biological weapons in different countries.
Capital and climate
Gore does not treat AI risk and AI’s climate potential as being in opposition. He cited a recent study from economist Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics projecting that AI applications aimed at efficiency and waste elimination could drive global emissions down by 6% to 9% per year starting next decade.
Preston pointed to where capital is already moving in response. She noted several fronts where the AI build-out itself is generating investable opportunities, not just consuming energy.
Among these, the firm is focused on opportunities to decouple compute from energy intensity at every layer of the stack. This includes the power supply down to green cement and green steel used in construction. They are also looking at storage optimization software and database design. The firm is also focused on grid resilience and flexibility, as the mix of power sources grows more complex.
Here, Preston noted that Generation has invested in Volue, a European company helping utilities pull more renewables into the grid. They also invested in Gridware, which places sensors on utility poles to monitor and help protect the grid from wildfire risk.
Energy transition
Gore tied the AI moment to a broader argument made in Generation’s 10th annual Sustainability Trends Report. This year marks the second time in four years the world has been “brutally reminded” that fossil fuels are a volatile source of energy. This first happened with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and now with the disruption to the Strait of Hormuz.
But unlike past years, when Gore’s exasperation with the pace of the clean energy transition was obvious, he does not see these events as a setback but instead as reasons for countries to embrace it at long last.
Indeed, Gore noted that globally, clean energy investment now runs at roughly twice the level of fossil fuel investment. Of all new electricity generation capacity added worldwide last year, 86% came from renewables. In the U.S. specifically, that figure was even higher, at 91%, “in spite of Donald Trump’s best efforts to slow it down,” he said.
China, in particular, received high marks from Gore. He applauded Beijing for wanting to be measured on emissions reductions rather than improvements in carbon intensity.
Asked what’s changed more than he expected a decade into publishing this report, Gore immediately pointed to solar power.
“For me personally, the scope and scale of the solar revolution is the breakout star of the sustainability transition,” he said. He observed that it is at, or near, the cost floor for new electricity generation right now. This is roughly tied with wind and meaningfully cheaper than gas, coal, or nuclear.
He closed with a line from a friend in Tennessee that had stuck with him: “If God had intended us to have a limitless supply of cheap, clean energy, he — or she — would have put a fusion reactor in the sky,” Gore said with a chuckle. “The joke makes itself.”
