Greenpeace Urges Nvidia to Cut Supply Chain Emissions as AI Chip Demand Surges

Greenpeace has called on Nvidia to reduce emissions across its manufacturing supply chain, urging interim CEO Colette Kress to invest in renewable power and extend the company's clean electricity commitments to the suppliers that produce its chips. The environmental group said it had sought talks with Nvidia for two years without success and raised the issue during CEO Jensen Huang's keynote at the company's GTC conference in Berlin in October.

According to a September analysis of company disclosures by researcher Ketan Joshi and environmental groups including Greenpeace and Climate Action Against Disinformation, Nvidia's supply-chain emissions rose 725% from 2020 levels, amounting to about 9.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Nvidia's sustainability report lists 10.7 million metric tons of indirect emissions for fiscal 2026, including 9.3 million tons from purchased goods and services, while direct emissions from its own operations were reported at 9,822 tons.

Nvidia designs chips and relies on suppliers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to manufacture them. The Verge reported that demand for AI chips has spurred construction of factories that require large amounts of water and chemicals. Running the chips also adds to electricity demand on local grids, and rapid hardware upgrades raise concerns about the volume of discarded equipment generated by data centers.

Joshi and his co-authors separately estimated that running Nvidia's chips could have generated about 21 million metric tons of emissions in 2025, based on chip power consumption. That estimate is not included in Nvidia's reported emissions total. In a September interview on The Ezra Klein Show, Huang argued that AI's demand for electricity would encourage companies to buy more clean power, while acknowledging that data centers would rely more on fossil fuels in the near term.

Nvidia says it matched 100% of its facilities' electricity use with clean power purchases in 2025. Greenpeace wants the company to extend its 100% renewable electricity target to its entire manufacturing supply chain by 2030, including suppliers in East Asia, and to invest in new renewable energy capacity. The group also called on Kress to address how Nvidia's chips are used in applications such as automated warfare. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.