Anyone with concerns about the environmental impact of flying commercial should probably be aware of how much carbon is produced by using AI tools like ChatGPT: Each month, the AI chatbot produces more than 260,930 kilograms of CO2—equal to the carbon emissions of 260 flights from New York City to London.
The comparison comes from a recent study by KnownHost, a website hosting provider that looked at the carbon emissions of popular AI tools. Its research broke down emissions by how many users each tool has, as well as how energy-efficient it is.
For example, Rytr, an AI writing tool, produces 1,057 kilograms of CO2 monthly, and Spellbook, which drafts contracts using AI, produces 20 kilograms a month. However, both produce more CO2 per page view than ChatGPT does. ChatGPT only produces 1.59 grams of CO2 per page view—compared with Rytr’s 10.1 and Spellbook’s 6.5.
On the other hand, ChatGPT—which boasts more than 164 million monthly users—is immensely more popular than Rytr and Spellbook. So ChatGPT’s emissions are boosted more by its popularity than contained by its energy efficiency.
Data centers, which tend to host AI applications like ChatGPT, will demand ever more energy. Berkeley Lab’s 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report found that data center energy demand more than doubled from 2017 to 2023, and it looks like such an increase will happen again: According to the International Energy Agency’s Electricity 2024 report, the amount of energy used by recent technological advances like data centers, AI, and cryptocurrency “could double” by next year. A third of that increase would be from just data centers.
“Electricity consumption of US data centers is currently growing at an accelerating rate,” according to Berkeley Lab’s report.
KnownHost CEO Daniel Pearson said in a statement that these figures show the importance of energy efficiency in AI infrastructure.
“As innovation continues into 2025, balancing environmental sustainability will need to become a core focus for tech companies and the users of their tools alike,” he said.
And the Biden administration seems to agree: In one of the president’s final executive orders, he offered a solution to data centers’ energy consumption, writing that the US, which houses 33% of the world’s data centers, should operate them using “clean power.”
“The United States must not be surpassed in its support for the development, commercialization, and operation of clean energy technologies at home and abroad,” the executive order said. “The rapid buildout of AI infrastructure offers another vital opportunity to accelerate and deploy these energy technologies.”
This report was originally published by Tech Brew.
