AI Environmental Impact Estimator 2026 - Research References

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

Deeper Research

• The AI Climate Hoax: Behind the Curtain Of How Big Tech Greenwashes Impacts (2026), by Ketan Joshi. An extensive research report on the gaps between sustainable AI claims and the real (and increasing) impacts. "The overstatement of the potential for AI to tackle climate change misdirects from the immediate costs of giant energy and water intensive data centres being imposed on communities worldwide." 

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 

• ✅ Jegham, Nidal et al. (2025). How Hungry is AI? Benchmarking Energy, Water, and Carbon Footprint of LLM Inference?  https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09598 

• 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

---

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 

---

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 

---

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 

---

Bibliography Last Updated 29 Jan 2026