AI emissions: What we know so far – and more importantly, what we don’t know
Sam Altman's recent estimate of the power use of a ChatGPT query was met with scepticism.
Speculation about the energy use and carbon footprint of artificial intelligence (AI) is rife – but hard facts are hard to find. Here’s what we know – and more importantly, what we don’t know about AI emissions.
The debate over how much energy an AI query uses was revived in June 2025 when OpenAI’s founder Sam Altman stated in a blog post that each query to ChatGPT consumes about 0.34 Wh of electricity – close to the number suggested by research firm Epoch AI earlier this year.
