AI Environmental Impact Estimator 2026 - Research References

✅ = Sources used in the calculations of this AI Environmental Impact Estimator app

Environmental Impacts of AI: Energy and Water

• ✅ **Audacia (2023). Sustainable AI: 3 tools to measure environmental impact of ML solutions. https://audacia.co.uk/technical-blog/tools-for-measuring-the-environmental-impact-of-ml 

• de Vries, Alex. (2023). Joule. The growing energy footprint of artificial intelligence.**  https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00365-3 

• Freedom, P. (2024). The Misrepresented Environmental Impact of AI: Separating Fact from Fiction. https://medium.com/the-simulacrum/the-misrepresented-environmental-impact-of-ai-separating-fact-from-fiction-7eb60893e4e9 

• ✅ Heikkilä, M. (2023). MIT Technology Review. Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/01/1084189/making-an-image-with-generative-ai-uses-as-much-energy-as-charging-your-phone/ 

• ✅ Heikkilä, M. (2023). MIT Technology Review. AI's carbon footprint is bigger than you think. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/05/1084417/ais-carbon-footprint-is-bigger-than-you-think/ 

• ✅ Luccioni & Jernite (HuggingFace, 2024). Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.16863 

• NPR (2024). AI brings soaring emissions for Google and Microsoft, a major contributor to climate change. https://www.npr.org/2024/07/12/g-s1-9545/ai-brings-soaring-emissions-for-google-and-microsoft-a-major-contributor-to-climate-change 

• OECD (2024). AI Emissions Scenario Generator. https://oecd.ai/en/catalogue/tools/ai-emissions-scenario-generator   (Direct link to tool: https://borisruf.github.io/carbon-footprint-modeling-tool/ai-scenarios.html) 

• PlanBeEco (2024). AI's carbon footprint – how does the popularity of artificial intelligence affect the climate? https://planbe.eco/en/blog/ais-carbon-footprint-how-does-the-popularity-of-artificial-intelligence-affect-the-climate/ 

• SlashGear (2024). Just How Much Energy Does Generating An AI Image Actually Use? https://www.slashgear.com/1696332/ai-image-generation-how-much-energy-used/  

• Tomlinson et al. (2024). Nature. The carbon emissions of writing and illustrating are lower for AI than for humans. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x 

• ✅ University of California, Riverside (2023). AI programs consume large volumes of scarce water. https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/04/28/ai-programs-consume-large-volumes-scarce-water 

• Yu et al. (2024) Revisit the environmental impact of artificial intelligence: overlooked carbon emission source? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11783-024-1918-y 

• ✅ Simon P. Couch (January 2026). Electricity Use of AI Coding Agents. https://www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01-20-cc-impact/

• ✅ Kanoppi (2025). Search Engines vs AI Energy Consumption Compared. https://kanoppi.co/search-engines-vs-ai-energy-consumption-compared/ 

• ✅ Sasha Luccioni - Hugging Face Blog. https://huggingface.co/blog/sasha/ai-data-centers-explained 

• ✅ ArXiv (2025). Text-to-Audio Energy Study. https://arxiv.org/html/2505.07615v2 

• ✅ PMC (2025). AI vs Human Programming. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12603251

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Carbon Emissions of Generating Electricity

• Carbon Brief (2023). China Carbon Emissions Set To Fall in 2024. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-emissions-set-to-fall-in-2024-after-record-growth-in-clean-energy/ 

• EIA (2024). How much carbon dioxide is produced per kilowatthour of U.S. electricity generation?https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 

• ✅ Ember Research (2024). China is a leader in solar, wind and electric transportation, responsible for half of global growth in 2023. https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/ 

• Our World in Data (2024). Renewable energy sources are growing quickly and will play a vital role in tackling climate change. https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy 

• Statista (2024). Carbon intensity of power sector in China from 2000 to 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1300419/power-generation-emission-intensity-china/ 

• Zhang et al. (2024). Study on life-cycle carbon emission factors of electricity in China. https://academic.oup.com/ijlct/article/doi/10.1093/ijlct/ctae181/7762370 

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Finding Equivalencies: How Many ___ Am I Using?

• Apple (2024). Environmental Progress Report. https://www.apple.com/environment/

• ✅ EPA (2024). Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator 

• ✅ EPA (2024). Vehicle Emissions Factors. https://www.epa.gov/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle 

• ✅ EPA eGrid (2024). Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID). https://www.epa.gov/egrid 

• ForTomorrow (2023). How much CO2 does a tree absorb per year? https://www.fortomorrow.eu/en/blog/co2-tree 

• Jackery (2024). How Many Watts Does A Laptop Use: MacBook, Dell, Asus and More [With Data Table]. https://www.jackery.com/blogs/knowledge/how-many-watts-a-laptop-uses 

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AI Model Research

• ✅ DeepSeek (2024). DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning. https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1/blob/main/DeepSeek_R1.pdf 

• ✅ Epoch AI (2025). How Much Energy Does ChatGPT Use? https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use 

• ✅ Hannah Ritchie - Our World in Data (August 2025). https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ai-footprint-august-2025 

• ✅ Our World in Data (2024). Interactive Charts on AI. https://ourworldindata.org/artificial-intelligence 

• ✅ Dev Sustainability (2025). The Environmental Impact of Google Gemini. https://www.devsustainability.com/p/the-environmental-impact-of-google-gemini 

• ✅ EESI (2024/2025). Data Centers & Water Consumption. https://www.eesi.se/2024/data-centers-water-consumption 

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Bibliogrpahy Last Updated 29 Jan 2026