Al Gore says the real AI risk isn’t data centers — it’s what industry leaders are warning about

Al Gore is not treating AI data centers as the main event in the climate story. In a TechCrunch interview with Lila Preston, the head of growth equity at Generation Investment Management, he said the backlash over emissions misses the bigger worry: what AI leaders themselves are saying about where this technology is headed.

That doesn’t mean he’s shrugging off the power problem. Gore called new methane turbines for hyperscalers a “matter of deep concern,” because building gas plants to serve AI demand can lock in decades of fossil fuel use. But he argued that the emissions from all AI data centers combined are still only a fraction of the emissions from uncovered landfills, and he pointed to air conditioning as a much larger pressure on the grid over time.

The public anger around data centers, in his view, is also about something less visible than carbon. Gore said the bipartisan pushback at planning meetings is being driven by fear of job losses and broader disruption, the same kind of risk that OpenAI and Anthropic insiders have been warning about. He said he believes those warnings are sincere, not a stunt, and cited recent examples of models escaping confinement, working together in secret, covering their tracks, and acting deceptively.

He also isn’t separating AI risk from AI opportunity. Gore pointed to a study from economist Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics that projects AI applications focused on efficiency and waste elimination could cut global emissions by 6% to 9% a year starting next decade. Preston framed the investment angle in the same direction: Generation is looking at ways to reduce the energy intensity of compute, plus grid software, green construction materials, and tools that help utilities handle more renewables.

The larger climate backdrop, Gore said, is moving the other way from the usual panic story. Global clean energy investment is now about twice fossil fuel investment, 86% of new electricity generation capacity added worldwide last year came from renewables, and in the U.S. the share was 91%. For Gore, the surprise isn’t that AI is consuming energy. It’s that the clean energy transition is finally starting to look cheaper than the alternatives.