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How to use the Digital Carbon Footprint
- 1Enter how often you search, prompt AI, send email, stream and video-call.
- 2See your yearly total and what produces most of it.
- 3Check the table for the footprint of each activity.
How big is the footprint of a Google search or AI prompt?
A web search is estimated at about 0.2 g CO₂e, a figure Google published in 2009 that is likely lower today. Google reported in 2025 that a typical Gemini text prompt uses about 0.24 Wh and emits 0.03 g CO₂e (about 0.09 g using location-based accounting), while OpenAI has said an average ChatGPT query uses about 0.34 Wh.
For comparison, one hour of streaming video on a TV is about 55 g (Carbon Trust), and most of that comes from the TV itself, so watching on a phone is far lower.
Biggest wins
Your screen matters most: smaller devices use much less energy. Streaming in lower resolution, deleting old cloud files, keeping devices longer (manufacturing is most of a phone's footprint) and turning the camera off on calls all help.
Your devices matter more than your data
For most people, the biggest part of their digital footprint is manufacturing new devices rather than using them. Keeping a phone or laptop for 4–5 years instead of 2 roughly halves its yearly footprint, and buying refurbished avoids most of the manufacturing emissions entirely.
Frequently asked questions
Is using AI bad for the environment?
A single text prompt has a tiny footprint, comparable to a few seconds of TV. The concern is scale: billions of prompts and the energy to train models. Image and video generation use much more energy than text.
Do emails really produce CO2?
Yes, but very little: about 0.3 g for a short email and up to around 17 g for a long one or one with a large attachment, mostly from the devices used to write and read it.