Library Guides: Generative Artificial Intelligence : Environmental Impact

How does generative AI impact the environment?

There are several ways generative AI impacts the environment:

Training AI models
- Training AI models generates carbon dioxide - a lot (Sim, 2024). It's estimated that training Chat GPT-3 used up the same amount of electricity as that used to power 120 US homes for a year (Zewe, 2025).
- This is also equivalent to 500 tons of carbon dioxide (Coleman, 2023) - or what it takes to drive a gasoline car over 800,000 kilometers.
Data centre operation
- These are essential for AI model training and consume large amounts of energy (Sim, 2024).
- Currently data centres consume ~ 1.5% of global electricity (Zewe, 2025) but this is forecast to rise to 6-12% of US energy consumption by 2028 (Kneese & Young, 2024).
- Energy demand is outpacing renewable energy infrastructure so is relying on fossil fuels (which means more carbon) (Kneese & Young, 2024).
- While current energy use is great, some estimate that AI will drive down emissions in the future as processing power improves and as machine learning is used to explore how to reduce emissions across industries such as airline travel and food production (Azhar & Frey, 2024).
- Projections by the International Energy Agency (IEA) put global electricity consumption for data centres at just under 3% of total global electricity consumption in 2030. They project that "from 2024 to 2030, data centre electricity consumption grows by around 15% per year, more than four times faster than the growth of total electricity consumption from all other sectors" but that "[d]espite the strong increase, data centre electricity demand growth accounts for less than 10% of global electricity demand growth between 2024 and 2030" (IEA, 2025).
Hardware such as Graphical Processing Units (GPUs)
- GPUs are essential to the operation of AI and require water to keep cool. One estimate is that the demand for water for this purpose could be equal to half of the current demand of the entire country of the United Kingdom by 2027 (Crawford, 2024).
- Already, "water used for cooling is contributing to stressed watersheds" (Foy, 2023).
Using generative AI for research
- Some estimates put a single search in genAI at fivefold the carbon footprint of a single Google search (Kneese & Young, 2024).

References

Azhar, A. and Frey, C.B. (2024, August 8). Weighing up AI's climate costs. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ai-climate-costs-not-necessarily-as-high-as-many-fear-by-azeem-azhar-and-carl-benedikt-frey-2024-08

Coleman, J. (2023, December 7). AI's climate impact goes beyond its emissions. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ais-climate-impact-goes-beyond-its-emissions

Crawford K. (2024). Generative AI's environmental costs are soaring - and mostly secret. Nature, 626(8000), 693. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00478-x

Foy, K. (2023, October 5). New tools are available to help reduce the energy that AI models devour. MIT News. https://news.mit.edu/2023/new-tools-available-reduce-energy-that-ai-models-devour-1005

International Energy Agency. (2025). Energy demand from AI. IEA. https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai

Kneese, T. & Young, M. (2024, August 20). Carbon emissions in the tailpipe of generative AI. Harvard Data Science Review. (Special Issue 5). https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.fbdf6128

Sim, E. (2024, April 18). Green AI: Considering the environmental impact of AI technologies. UBC Information Technology News. University of British Columbia. https://it.ubc.ca/news/green-ai-considering-environmental-impact-ai-technologies.

Zewe, A. (2025, January 17). Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impact. MIT News. https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117

Environmental Impact of AI

We did the math on AI's energy footprint. Here's the story you haven't heard.
MIT Technology Review
AI’s climate impact goes beyond its emissions
Scientific American
Carbon emissions in the tailpipe of generative AI
Harvard Data Science Review (2024-08, Special Issue 5)
Green AI: Considering the environmental impact of AI technologies
UBC
The green dilemma: Can AI fulfil its potential without harming the environment?
Earth.org
How much water does AI consume? The public deserves to know
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organisation that works to build better policies for better lives.

Data centre electricity consumption by region, Base Case, 2020-2030

Source: IEA. (2025). Data centre electricity consumption by region, Base Case, 2020-2030. IEA. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/data-centre-electricity-consumption-by-region-base-case-2020-2030 Licence: CC BY 4.0