United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has launched a new environmental initiative aimed at holding the technology sector accountable for the growing resource consumption of artificial intelligence. Speaking at London Climate Action Week, Guterres drew attention to what he called a ‘Tale of Two Crises’—the climate emergency and the global energy crisis—and positioned AI as a major driver of escalating demand for power and water.
The proposed ‘AI Environmental Transparency Initiative’ calls on major AI companies to measure and publicly disclose the carbon, water, and land footprints of their systems. Guterres emphasized that data centers already consume more electricity than most individual nations and predicted that by 2030 their power usage could surpass that of all but five countries worldwide. He also warned that AI infrastructure could consume enough water by the end of the decade to meet the basic needs of all 1.3 billion residents of sub-Saharan Africa for a full year, while occupying vast land areas that often see little benefit.
To address these hidden costs, Guterres urged every major AI firm to commit to powering all data centers with renewable energy by 2030. He stressed that clean energy—particularly solar and wind, whose costs have fallen dramatically since 2010—offers the most scalable solution to feed strained power grids. The initiative also calls for upgrades to outdated transmission systems, faster permitting for renewable projects, and treating electrical grids as strategic infrastructure.
The UN initiative is part of a broader strategy to manage the inevitable energy transition while ensuring that AI contributes to climate solutions rather than exacerbating environmental burdens on vulnerable communities.
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