The Carbon Cost of Conversation
- Juan Manuel Ortiz de Zarate
- Aug 7
- 10 min read
Artificial intelligence has reshaped how we communicate, with faster emails, smarter assistants, automated translations, and human-like conversations with chatbots. But beneath the convenience and innovation lies a rarely acknowledged cost: the environmental footprint of these interactions. As we type queries and receive instant answers from large language models (LLMs), these systems consume electricity, draw on vast computing resources, and generate carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) emissions. In their 2025 study, “Energy Costs of Communicating with AI”[1], researchers Maximilian Dauner and Gudrun Socher present one of the most detailed analyses to date of the sustainability challenges[7] posed by these advanced models.
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