Google measured the energy, water, and carbon emissions associated with text prompts on its Gemini apps. The median text prompt consumes 0.24 watt-hours, about the same as watching TV for under nine seconds. The median carbon footprint is 0.03 grams of CO2, calculated using each grid's energy mix and Google’s renewable investments. Each prompt uses roughly 0.26 milliliters of water. The methodology counts processing energy for tokenization, probability calculations, decoding, cooling, infrastructure, and idle capacity. Over 12 months, median energy per prompt fell 97% and carbon fell 98% due to model, algorithm, hardware, and system optimizations. Cumulative impact could remain large as usage scales, and other models or tasks like video generation may have markedly different footprints.
The energy use for the median text prompt is far less than some previous estimates: Google found that it uses just 0.24 watt-hours, or the equivalent of watching TV for less than nine seconds. Other models might be wildly different: One estimate of OpenAI's GPT-5 model suggested that it might use as much as 40 watt-hours per prompt. (That estimate, unlike Google's calculations, wasn't based on internal data.)
Google laid out a detailed methodology for measuring the environmental impact of getting answers from its AI. For energy, that includes the electricity burned as the system converts your text prompt into a form it can process, calculates all the probabilities for which word could come next, and decodes the result into readable text. It also includes the energy for cooling and other infrastructure needed at a data center, and for keeping idle machines running in case demand spikes.
The carbon footprint of the median prompt was 0.03 grams of CO2, based on the energy mix for each grid and Google's own investments in renewable energy. Each prompt also uses 0.26 milliliters, or about five drops, of water. Efficiency is improving rapidly. Over a 12-month period, the company reports that the median energy use per Gemini prompt has fallen 97%, while the carbon footprint has dropped 98%. Google attributes these gains to advances in its language model architecture, more efficient algorithms, custom-designed hardware.
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