How many trees absorb your AI use?
A mature tree absorbs roughly 22 kg of CO2 a year. This calculator compares that with the emissions of your text prompts and generated images.
A young tree absorbs far less than a mature one, and a tree only stores carbon for as long as it stands. The result is a comparison, and it does not make your use carbon neutral.
Result
- CO2 per year
- 850 g CO2
- Energy per year
- 3.99 kWh
- Days of absorption by one tree
- 14.1
These are estimates. Real figures depend on the model, the data center and the length of the answer.
How this is calculated
- Rule of thumb. One mature tree absorbs about 22 kg of CO2 a year. Real values vary widely with species, age and climate.
- OpenAI (2025). Sam Altman states an average ChatGPT query uses about 0.34 Wh and 0.32 mL of water. blog.samaltman.com
- Luccioni, Jernite and Strubell (2023), Power Hungry Processing. Image generation averages 2.9 kWh per 1,000 images. arxiv.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
Questions
Can planting trees cancel out my AI use?
Trees absorb carbon slowly and the benefit lasts only while the forest stands. Planting is useful for other reasons too, like soil, water and wildlife. Using less energy and cleaner electricity cuts emissions directly.
Why is the number so small?
With the published figures, the electricity for personal chat use is modest. The numbers grow quickly with image generation, long reasoning tasks and company wide use.