UN chief urges AI companies to 'come clean' about the pollution they generate

On June 23, 2026, at London Climate Action Week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres formally proposed the 'AI Environmental Transparency Initiative.' The core goal of the initiative is to require AI companies to disclose their energy consumption and carbon emissions data during operations, in order to assess and mitigate the negative environmental impacts of AI technology.

In his speech, Guterres emphasized that the rapid development of AI has brought significant environmental costs, but the public and regulators know very little about them. He called on AI companies to 'come clean' and voluntarily disclose pollution data, warning that otherwise they may face stricter regulation.

Training and inference of AI models require substantial computing resources, especially for large language models and image recognition systems. It is estimated that training a large AI model can produce hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to the lifetime emissions of dozens of cars. However, most AI companies currently do not disclose this data, making it difficult to accurately assess their environmental impact.

Guterres' initiative aims to fill this information gap. He called for the establishment of global uniform disclosure standards, requiring companies to report the full chain of carbon emissions from data center electricity use to hardware manufacturing. The move has received support from some environmental groups but also faces resistance from within the industry, which worries about high disclosure costs or the leakage of trade secrets.

Although the initiative's intent is clear, its implementation faces multiple challenges. First, there is a lack of recognized measurement methods: different companies may use different standards to calculate carbon emissions, leading to incomparable data. Second, the AI supply chain is complex, including chip manufacturing, data center operations, and network transmission, making it difficult to precisely track emissions at each stage.

Additionally, some AI companies may refuse to disclose detailed data citing trade secrets. In his speech, Guterres did not mention specific penalties, only stating that 'voluntary disclosure' is the first step and that mandatory regulations may be promoted in the future. Currently, the initiative is still in the proposal stage and has not yet received formal approval from the UN General Assembly.