Latest news with #carbonemissions
The Independent
36 minutes ago
- Science
- The Independent
Revealed: The AI chatbot requests that cause the most carbon emissions
A new study reveals that every query to large language models like ChatGPT consumes energy and generates carbon emissions. Complex reasoning questions, such as those in abstract algebra or philosophy, lead to significantly higher carbon emissions, up to six times more than simpler queries. Models designed for explicit reasoning processes produce substantially more carbon dioxide, with some generating up to 50 times more emissions than concise response models. The study highlights an "accuracy-sustainability trade-off," where highly accurate AI models often result in greater energy consumption and carbon footprint. Researchers recommend that users reduce emissions by prompting AI for concise answers and reserving high-capacity models for tasks that genuinely require their advanced capabilities.
Bloomberg
5 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
IEA Sees Bargains in $100 Billion LNG Clean-Up Proposal
The world's liquefied natural gas supply chains spew roughly 350 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year — more than Italy's annual emissions. For roughly $100 billion, that climate footprint could be cut by 60%, according to the International Energy Agency. The proposal identifies multiple low-cost opportunities that would significantly decrease LNG's climate footprint. For instance, cutting methane leaks alone could bring down annual emissions by close to 90 million tons of CO2e, or 25% of total LNG emissions, the IEA said. About half of that reduction could be realized at no net cost.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
These AI chatbot questions cause most carbon emissions, scientists find
Queries requiring AI chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT to think logically and reason produce more carbon emissions than other types of questions, according to a new study. Every query typed into a large language model like ChatGPT requires energy and leads to carbon dioxide emissions. The emission levels depend on the chatbot, the user, and the subject matter, researchers at Germany's Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences say. The study, published in the journal Frontiers, compares 14 AI models and finds that answers requiring complex reasoning cause more carbon emissions than simple answers. Queries needing lengthy reasoning, like abstract algebra or philosophy, cause up to six times greater emissions than more straightforward subjects like high school history. Researchers recommend that frequent users of AI chatbots adjust the kind of questions they pose to limit carbon emissions. The study assesses as many as 14 LLMs on 1,000 standardised questions across subjects to compare their carbon emissions. 'The environmental impact of questioning trained LLMs is strongly determined by their reasoning approach, with explicit reasoning processes significantly driving up energy consumption and carbon emissions," study author Maximilian Dauner says. 'We found that reasoning-enabled models produced up to 50 times more carbon dioxide emissions than concise response models.' When a user puts a question to an AI chatbot, words or parts of words in the query are converted into a string of numbers and processed by the model. This conversion and other computing processes of the AI produce carbon emissions. The study notes that reasoning models on average create 543.5 tokens per question while concise models require only 40. 'A higher token footprint always means higher CO2 emissions,' it says. For instance, one of the most accurate models is Cogito which reaches about 85 per cent accuracy. It produces three times more carbon emissions than similarly sized models that provide concise answers. "Currently, we see a clear accuracy-sustainability trade-off inherent in LLM technologies," Dr Dauner says. "None of the models that kept emissions below 500 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent achieved higher than 80 per cent accuracy on answering the 1,000 questions correctly.' Carbon dioxide equivalent is a unit for measuring the climate change impact of various greenhouse gases. Researchers hope the new findings will cause people to make more informed decisions about their AI use. Citing an example, researchers say queries seeking DeepSeek R1 chatbot to answer 600,000 questions may create carbon emissions equal to a round-trip flight from London to New York. In comparison, Alibaba Cloud's Qwen 2.5 can answer more than three times as many questions with similar accuracy rates while generating the same emissions. "Users can significantly reduce emissions by prompting AI to generate concise answers or limiting the use of high-capacity models to tasks that genuinely require that power," Dr Dauner says. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data
Washington Post
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
North Carolina lawmakers finalize bill that would scrap 2030 carbon reduction goal
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina legislators finalized a bill Thursday that would eliminate an interim greenhouse gas reduction mandate set in a landmark 2021 law, while still directing regulators to aim to cancel out power plant carbon emissions in the state within the next 25 years. With some bipartisan support, the state Senate voted to accept the House version that would repeal the 2021 law's requirement that electric regulators take 'all reasonable steps to achieve' reducing carbon dioxide output 70% from 2005 levels by 2030. The law's directive to take similar steps to meet a carbon neutrality standard by 2050 would remain in place.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
A forest the size of North America would be needed to offset Big Oil's reserves, study finds
The world would need to plant a forest the size of North America in order to offset planet-warming emissions from the 200 largest oil and gas companies, new research has found. A study published Thursday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment analyzed the economic and ecological benefits of planting trees as a means of balancing potential carbon dioxide emissions from the projected burning of oil reserves held by the fossil fuel industry. Many experts consider planting trees to be one of the best means of balancing CO2 because the plants absorb and store carbon that otherwise would enter the atmosphere and heat the planet. But researchers in England and France found that the tree-planting process, known as afforestation, faces insurmountable land use and financial challenges. "We have to be careful as a society to think that we can continue to burn fossil fuels and emit CO2 in a sort of business-as-usual scenario and just offset it later," said Nina Friggens, a research fellow in plant soil ecology at the University of Exeter and one of the study's authors. "The picture on that is increasingly looking very unviable." Read more: The planet is dangerously close to this climate threshold. Here's what 1.5°C really means The world's 200 largest fossil-fuel companies hold about 200 billion tons of carbon in their reserves, which would generate as much as 742 billion tons of CO2 if burned, according to the study. That's far more than the budget required to limit global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.5 degrees Celsius — an internationally agreed-upon target intended to prevent the worst effects of climate change. The burning of fossil fuels represents about 90% of planet-warming emissions. Most experts and governments agree that rapid action is needed, including a combination of offsetting emissions and reducing them altogether. But, as the paper notes, "fossil-fuel companies currently face little incentive to reduce the extraction and use of fossil fuels, and regulatory measures to limit these activities have been slow to materialise." The researchers set out to calculate how much land area of afforestation would be needed to compensate for these emissions by 2050. The number they came up with was 9.5 million square miles of new trees — more land area than North America and part of South America. "That would displace all infrastructure, agriculture and preexisting habitats," Friggens said. "It's not something that we are at all suggesting that we do — it's just to illustrate the size of the problem." Read more: 2024 was the hottest year on record, NASA and NOAA confirm The economic viability of such a project for oil and gas companies is even less realistic. Most estimates suggest that afforestation is the "cheapest" means of offsetting carbon emissions — the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates it will cost more than $14.5 per ton of carbon offset. At that rate, afforestation offsets would cost the 200 largest fossil fuel companies around $10.8 trillion — or roughly 11% of global GDP, according to the study. By comparison, the price of direct air capture — a newer field of technology that draws CO2 from the air and stores it underground or in industrial products — would be about $908 per ton, costing the companies $673.7 trillion, or about 700% of global GDP, according to the study. That said, even the more affordable afforestation approach would cause nearly all fossil fuel companies to lose value, according to the researchers — they referred to this as "negative net environmental valuation." The companies "would be worth less than what they would have to pay for their offsetting," said Alain Naef, an assistant professor of environmental economics at the ESSEC Business School in Paris and another of the study's authors. Lucy Hutyra, a distinguished professor of earth and environment at Boston University who was not involved in the study, said the paper is an "interesting thought experiment, underscoring the immense social and economic costs associated with burning fossil fuels." She said the economic findings are noteworthy, although nuanced, as monetary estimates of the economic damages that result from emitting CO2 into the atmosphere — sometimes referred to as "the social cost of carbon" — can fluctuate widely. She noted that the Trump administration recently ordered federal agencies to stop considering such damages when writing regulations, "effectively making it $0." "[The study] clearly supports the argument that these reserves are best left unexploited," Hutyra said. "However, the authors adopt a maximalist approach, assuming that all emissions must be offset solely through afforestation, which unsurprisingly leads to extreme land requirements. Afforestation alone is clearly insufficient to address this scale of the problem." Indeed, the researchers acknowledged that the study has limitations as it relies on broad assumptions, including that all existing fossil fuel reserves will be sold and burned. In addition, by focusing on afforestation, it does not account for other approaches that are central to tackling climate change, such as preventing deforestation and restoring existing forests. Read more: California decarbonization projects are among two dozen eliminated by Trump's Department of Energy Still, the findings come as the world moves further from its climate goals. Last year was Earth's hottest on record with a global average surface temperature about 1.46 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial baseline — closer than ever to the 1.5 degree threshold. What's more, the Trump administration has shifted the United States away from decarbonization efforts, including canceling funding for dozens of decarbonization projects in recent weeks and ramping up efforts to increase oil and gas production. President Trump in January also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, the treaty signed by about 200 nations from which the 1.5 degree Celsius goal stems. The researchers said their findings should not suggest afforestation and carbon offsetting are futile. "It can work — it can have valuable climate benefits, cultural benefits, social benefits, biodiversity benefits," Friggens said. Naef said carbon offsetting remains an important tool but cannot be used to compensate for all emissions. "While offsetting can be useful at the margin, the key change will not be offsetting — it will be a reduction of carbon emissions," he said. The main message from the paper, he added, is that "oil and gas should remain in the ground." This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
