AI carbon footprint calculator
Every answer from an AI assistant runs on servers that draw electricity. How much carbon that releases depends on two things, the energy one prompt needs and how clean the grid behind the data center is.
Enter how many prompts you send in a day. The calculator multiplies them by a published energy figure, then by the carbon intensity of the grid you pick.
Result
- Energy per day
- 6.8 Wh
- Energy per year
- 2.48 kWh
- Same CO2 as driving a petrol car
- 4.41 km
These are estimates. Real figures depend on the model, the data center and the length of the answer.
How this is calculated
- Google (2025). A median Gemini text prompt uses 0.24 Wh, 0.03 g CO2e and 0.26 mL of water. arxiv.org
- OpenAI (2025). Sam Altman states an average ChatGPT query uses about 0.34 Wh and 0.32 mL of water. blog.samaltman.com
- IEA, Electricity 2024. Earlier estimate of 2.9 Wh per ChatGPT request, used here as the high case. iea.org
- Ember, Global Electricity Review 2025. Carbon intensity of electricity in 2024 (Poland 2023). France and Sweden come from a study based on Ember data and are approximate. ember-energy.org
- Our assumptions. A phone charge is 15 Wh, an LED bulb is 10 W, boiling one litre of water takes 110 Wh, a petrol car emits 120 g CO2 per km.
Questions
What is the carbon footprint of one ChatGPT prompt?
With the 0.34 Wh figure given by OpenAI and the average European grid, one prompt emits about 0.07 g of CO2. On the French grid it is about 0.01 g, and on the Polish grid about 0.23 g.
Why do estimates differ so much?
Companies measure different things. Some count only the chips that run the model, others add cooling and idle servers. Long answers and reasoning models also use far more energy than a short reply.