COP31 host launches Antalya AI energy pledge as UN climate chief warns Big Tech

COP31 President Murat Kurum said Türkiye will put climate-responsible AI on the November Antalya summit agenda with a voluntary Antalya Pledge on AI, while UN climate chief Simon Stiell warned that energy-hungry AI is driving fossil pollution and public backlash.

POLITICS desk — AI’s power bill is leaving the niche energy beat and entering the main UN climate stage, which is where governments set the terms for the next decade of buildout.

On Monday 21 Sep 2026 in New York, during Climate Week, COP31 President Murat Kurum said the November climate summit in Antalya will take on artificial intelligence’s growing energy use. COP31 is this year’s big United Nations climate meeting. Türkiye is hosting it. He said governments should “start setting the terms.” Channel NewsAsia calls him COP31 President and Turkish Climate Minister. Reuters, carried the same day by Rappler, calls him COP31 president-designate and Minister for Environment and Urban Planning. Same person. Two English titles in the wires. These lines are his statement, via those reports.

What he wants from the companies building AI, still those wires. Kurum said, “We expect companies to be transparent about their energy use and to power their operations with clean energy.” Transparent, here, means say how much electricity the machines use. Clean energy means power that is not coal, oil, or gas. Channel NewsAsia says a priority for the Antalya summit is “climate-responsible AI,” and it quotes him: “COP31 will meet this moment.”

The pledge has a name. Climate Home News says the COP31 hosts will launch the Antalya Pledge on AI. They bill it as a “political” commitment on how AI is “designed, procured, powered, deployed, measured and managed” in support of climate action. Procured means bought. Deployed means put to work. Channel NewsAsia calls the same effort a “political pledge” on how AI can support climate goals, and says it is being written with a United Nations agency. Reuters names that agency: the International Telecommunication Union, the UN body for phone and internet standards. A draft is due before the summit. Climate Home says before the meeting opens in Antalya in early November. Channel NewsAsia says the formal talks start 9 Nov.

This is not a treaty vote. Channel NewsAsia says the pledge would be voluntary. It would not need the approval of the nearly 200 countries that adopt official UN climate texts by consensus. Consensus means every country has to agree. Each year, the host asks countries to back non-binding pledges on a side track called the action agenda. That track sits apart from the formal negotiations. This year Australia runs those negotiations. Türkiye hosts the meeting and designs the side agenda. A voluntary side pledge is not a decision the summit has adopted.

Climate Home says no further details are public yet. That includes whether the pledge text will contain a clean-energy promise, and whether governments and companies will be asked to sign. Kurum’s line that companies should use clean energy is his expectation in the statement. It is not a sentence from a draft this desk has seen. A megawatt is a unit of power, the size of a small power plant’s output. None of those numbers or names is in the wires.

A second track is about using AI, not only plugging it in. Climate Home says the presidency will also launch an “AI for Clean Technologies” initiative: a portfolio of pilot projects in priority sectors, including smart energy and green industry. A pilot is a small trial, not a nationwide program. The presidency told Climate Home the point is to show the responsible use of AI in practice. Channel NewsAsia says the second initiative would showcase pilot projects for that same reason. Reuters adds that COP31 will have a day on technology and AI, and that the pilots are meant to connect technology developers, industry partners, and investors.

The UN’s top climate official went further the same day. Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, spoke in New York. That convention is the treaty the COP meetings serve. Climate Home quotes him: AI leaders are “on thin ice when it comes to license to operate, and sinking deep underwater when it comes to public support.” License to operate means the public’s willingness to let the industry keep building. He also said, “Energy-guzzling artificial intelligence is driving up planet-heating pollution from coal, oil and gas, while ratcheting up energy costs for households and businesses.” Climate Home reports that he added data-center projects are being put on hold because of local opposition, from New York to Texas. A data center is a building full of computers that train and run AI, and that draws a lot of electricity. Bloomberg’s same-day headline is “Energy-Guzzling AI Must Rein in Its Emissions, Says UN Climate Chief,” and its opening uses the same thin-ice and energy-guzzling lines.

What Stiell asked the industry to do, still Climate Home. Show why AI’s benefits outweigh its “skyrocketing costs.” Set credible climate targets. Come clean about energy use. Power data centers with renewable energy. Renewable energy is power from sources that replenish, such as sun and wind. He said the industry needs to “respect science and start aligning with global climate efforts — urgently.” It is a warning and a request. It is not a new UN rule, and it is not the Antalya Pledge.

Same Monday, still Channel NewsAsia, the presidency’s other centrepiece is a separate electrification push: raise the share of global energy demand met by electricity to 35 percent by 2035. Electrification means swapping machines that burn fuel — a gas heater, a diesel van — for ones that run on electricity. Channel NewsAsia says about one-third of the world’s electricity still comes from coal, and that the 35-by-2035 target does not say the extra power has to be clean. It is not the AI pledge, and it is not a cap on data-center power.

Plain English for the rest of the card: COP31 = the 2026 UN climate summit, hosted in Antalya, Türkiye. Climate Week = the New York meetings that run beside the UN General Assembly. action agenda = the host’s side list of voluntary pledges, apart from the official treaty talks. consensus = every country has to agree. voluntary = countries and companies can join, and the text is not a summit decision. International Telecommunication Union = the UN agency for phone and internet standards. data center = a building full of computers that run AI. license to operate = public permission to keep building. This filing is the Antalya AI pledge announcement plus Stiell’s same-day warning. It is not a signed treaty.