Josh Parker, head of sustainability at the chipmaker Nvidia, said artificial intelligence has “huge potential to drive net emissions reductions.”
He didn’t offer much detail about how or when these reductions will happen. The data center boom has pushed U.S. electricity demand upward for the first time in decades, fueling the construction of natural gas turbines and diesel generators that will increase greenhouse gas emissions. There’s no end in sight.
Parker said artificial intelligence-driven energy savings in manufacturing, buildings and transportation could help cancel out the technology’s carbon footprint, as can “moonshots,” like nuclear fusion.
“Even if A.I. only accelerates commercializable nuclear fusion or even advanced fission by a year, the terms of carbon savings and energy abundance and affordability are really, really dramatic,” Mr. Parker said.
Mr. Parker’s words are a familiar refrain from technology industry executives. They have argued that A.I. will make up for its high energy consumption with climate science breakthroughs. Nvidia disclosed in a recent sustainability report that its supply chain emissions nearly tripled from 2024 to 2026. Several large tech companies have also reported soaring emissions in the last few years during the A.I boom.
Nvidia is a $5 trillion company that has seen its revenue soar since the start of the A.I. boom. Earlier this summer, it reported nearly $60 billion in quarterly profits, more than doubling over the prior year, and it is the most valuable company in the world by market capitalization.
Because its chips are so ubiquitous in the A.I. industry, Nvidia’s fortunes are closely intertwined with those of its data center customers, some of which it also finances. The company controls an estimated 90 percent of the U.S. market for advanced semiconductors, the computer chips that power artificial intelligence.
Mr. Parker said Nvidia is working to make data centers more energy efficient, and he cited the company’s efforts to build facilities with local timber.
“Data centers absolutely can be sustainable,” he said.
Instead of just considering the technology industry’s direct emissions, Mr. Parker said, “what’s really important is what is the net impact of the technology,” after accounting for future energy savings in other sectors.
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