Google and OpenAI have been reassuring users with low-energy consumption figures per AI query. Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather's Claude Code data tells a different story.
Google says a median Gemini text prompt uses just 0.24 watt-hours (Wh), less energy than nine seconds of television. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman estimated the average ChatGPT query at 0.34 Wh, roughly on par with a Google search from 2009.
Both data points were published last year. Even then, it was clear the numbers misrepresent actual AI usage. They don't account for reasoning models that generate many times more tokens from a single chat query, multimodal processing across various formats, multi-agent systems, code generation, scaling across billions of uses, and plenty of other factors. Google's "study" in particular massively downplayed real energy consumption.
Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather has now calculated just how big that gap is in an analysis on The Climate Brink. One major blind spot remains: nobody outside AI labs knows the actual energy cost per token of a state-of-the-art model. Keep in mind that Hausfather's numbers are reasonable estimates, but still just estimates.
They're also based on current usage patterns. AI labs are already working to scale agent-based systems that run autonomously on tasks for days, weeks, or even months. That could drive an exponential jump in energy consumption.
