AI Wants Power. Now Comes the Accounting.

Every chatbot query and every model trained runs on electricity. This prompts not just the desired query response, but also a familiar set of social and environmental impacts. In most industries, operational impacts like energy consumption and emissions, water stewardship, and community relations are the subject of corporate sustainability disclosures. This week’s news looks at both challenges and sources of hope related to AI’s ESG impacts and the related transparency.

First, the Environmental Integrity Project recently determined that 74 gas-fired plants have been proposed to power U.S. data centers. These “behind the meter” facilities – which would collectively emit approximately the same amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) a year as France or Australia – could bypass the usual permitting process that public plants face. Reporting on EIP’s findings, Reuters notes that only one in three Americans approves of the pace of data-center construction, which has given rise to a political dilemma heading into U.S. mid-term elections in November 2026.

This week, the United Nations set out to close the gap between the physical footprint of AI infrastructure, and expectations of transparency and good governance. As Fast Company reports, UN Secretary-General António Guterres just launched an AI Environmental Transparency Initiative calling on every major AI company to measure and disclose its full footprint — carbon, water, land — and to run its data centers on renewable energy sources by 2030. For a sense of the urgency of this demand, data centers drew about 1.5% of global electricity in 2025, headed toward nearly 3% by 2030. Given their role in global energy consumption, Guterres said “It is time to come clean.”

It’s important to remember that building AI infrastructure can also help drive growth in the green economy – as long as electrification is linked to renewable energy. As reported by ESG Dive, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) found that for the first time, the global green economy has passed US$10 trillion in market capitalization, with electrification and AI infrastructure among the drivers. LSEG calculates that if the green economy is considered as a standalone industry, it “would now be the world’s third largest, surpassing Health Care, only behind Technology and Industrials.”

The supply chain is a specific area of the AI economy with crucial opportunities for greener infrastructure. TIME’s new Most Sustainable Companies list scores companies on transparency, and names several companies that help power the AI industry as disclosing well, including graphics processing unit (GPU) maker Nvidia (#31), chip-equipment maker ASML (#24), and data-center power specialist Delta Electronics (#34). The emissions impact of tech supply chains is the focus of a new G&A paper that maps what Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Meta now expect. G&A’s Scope 3 and SBTi target-setting teams help suppliers deliver on these ambitious expectations from their largest customers.

With the evolution of AI raising new questions about transparency, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the world’s leading standard-setter in corporate ESG disclosure, has flagged AI and other aspects of digitalization as a research priority that could shape future guidance. This week, GRI named G&A co-founder Lou Coppola as the new Chair of its Stakeholder Council, a multistakeholder body that advises on the standards and helps shape its priorities. GRI’s standards are referenced by companies representing 62% of global market capitalization across 107 jurisdictions. Lou plans to bring meaningful stewardship at a moment of high stakes and substantial impacts for sustainability reporting.

Also in this issue: California moves to delay its first SB 253 emissions deadline from August to November; ESG Today covers the ISSB allowing metrics for nature disclosure as part of the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD); Responsible Investor has investors backing SBTi’s net-zero revisions, with caveats; an EcoVadis study finds that 80% of Tier 1 suppliers still lack any process for managing supply-chain sustainability risk; and G&A’s new paper on extended producer responsibility in the EU hones in on steps to take by August 12 for companies that place packaging on the EU market.

This is just the introduction of G&A's Sustainability Highlights newsletter this week. Click here to view the full issue.