Al Gore Praises China’s Clean Energy Surge While Warning of U.S. Climate Leadership Decline

Twenty-five years after his historic presidential bid, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is reflecting on a global energy transition he never predicted. In a wide-ranging interview on the release of Generation Investment Management’s ninth annual climate report, Gore admitted he “would not have seen this coming” — China’s rise as the world’s leading force in clean energy. While his 2000 campaign platform positioned the U.S. as the natural leader of global climate action, today China is outpacing Washington in solar, nuclear, and renewable investment.

Gore stressed that he is less concerned about which nation takes the lead than about the opportunities America is missing. He argues the planet “doesn’t care which country leads” the charge toward sustainability, but the U.S. has squandered its own potential by dismantling climate policies. According to the report, China has already surpassed its solar targets six years ahead of schedule and now opens the equivalent of three new one-gigawatt solar plants every day. Meanwhile, America’s stop-start climate agenda has slowed momentum and weakened its competitive edge in clean technology.

The conversation also touched on the tech industry’s outsized impact on energy demand and rare-earth mining. Lila Preston, Gore’s co-founder at Generation, said the AI boom could double data-center electricity use by 2030, a “shock to the system” unless renewable power and storage scale even faster. Gore added that Climate TRACE — an initiative his firm helped seed — is already tracking 99% of global greenhouse gas emissions to hold governments and companies accountable, countering attempts to hide pollution data.

Gore also warned of mounting environmental justice battles in U.S. communities. Citing the example of unpermitted gas turbines at Elon Musk’s xAI data center in a majority-Black Memphis neighborhood, he described how fossil fuel interests “capture politicians better than they capture emissions.” While communities are pushing back, he said, federal and state policies still make it harder for local governments to block harmful projects — a dynamic he sees as emblematic of America’s faltering climate leadership.

Despite the setbacks, Gore remains optimistic about the energy transition’s momentum. Clean technologies are becoming cheaper, public opinion is shifting, and fossil fuel resistance is weakening. The real question, he said, is whether the world can move fast enough to avoid irreversible tipping points like the unprecedented disruption of the Humboldt Current reported this year. “We have the technologies, the models, and the economics in our favor,” Gore said. “Now we just have to accelerate the decline of polluting industries’ power to resist change.”

source: techcrunch