President Donald Trump's administration is "bullying" countries to abandon their climate change policies by linking them to trade deals, threatening to slow international action to limit global warming, former US vice-president Al Gore said.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Gore said the Trump administration is "actively attempt[ing] to slow down the pace of the energy transition in every way that they can".

"We have seen, just in the last week, a tour of Europe by a couple of the Trump officials trying to put pressure on other nations to change their policies and goals," he said.

US energy secretary Chris Wright, who has visited the continent over the past week, warned the EU that its climate policies and "crusade" to achieve "net zero" greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 posed a major threat to the EU-US trade deal.

Gore said that some countries were responding to the US pressure with "greenhushing", referring to the tactic of climate efforts being downplayed or kept quiet.

However, he said trade threats as an "effective bullying tactic is going to be a diminishing asset for [Trump], because the rest of the world is just on to the fact that it's nuts".

"I think that most countries are going to continue moving forward [on climate action] in spite of whatever pressure Trump tries to put on," Gore added.

The 77-year-old Gore was speaking as the Generation Investment Management group, which he co-founded more than two decades ago with former Goldman Sachs executive David Blood, released its annual report on the state of the global transition to a low emissions economy.

It manages about $33bn in assets, including a stake in UK-based energy provider Octopus.

The report by the group warned of a critical juncture in global climate action, with the world far off track for the Paris agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5C ideally, even before the US withdrew from the UN accord for the second time under a Trump presidency.

"Every night the television news is like a major hike through the Book of Revelation," Gore said, with the US as well as other countries around the world suffering wildfires, floods and extreme heat.

Last year was the hottest on record. "The reality of what we're facing is now beginning to sink in," he added.

The Generation report indicated that while the global energy shift away from burning fossil fuels, the major contributor to global warming, could be slowed by the policies of the Trump administration, the long term shift to a greener economy was also "going to continue very powerfully".

"The market forces that have been unleashed, especially in the last 10 years since the Paris agreement, are the most powerful agents of change," Gore said, as far more investments were being made now in renewable energy than fossil fuels.

In another example, he cited the forecasts for electric vehicle growth, which were expected to account for 25 per cent of global sales this year and more than 60 per cent in China.

The clean energy shift under way in China was "astonishing", he said, also noting the rapid deployment of solar panels, as well as the roll out of its solar technology in developing countries such as Pakistan.

Gore also played down concerns about the increasing energy demands of AI.

"It's a cause for deep concern, not panic," he said, and expected technological advances to "reduce emissions that come with the development of generative AI".

US 'bullying' countries to drop climate goals, warns Al Gore