DALL-E 3 Energy Usage & Carbon Footprint

Q: How much energy does DALL-E 3 use per query?

Each DALL-E 3 query consumes approximately 3 Wh of energy. This is 10x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).

Q: What is DALL-E 3's carbon footprint?

Based on the carbon intensity of its inference location (Azure US East / Sweden), each DALL-E 3 query produces approximately 1.2g of CO2.

Q: How does DALL-E 3 compare to a Google search?

A DALL-E 3 query uses 10x more than a traditional Google search in terms of energy consumption. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while DALL-E 3 uses 3 Wh per query.

Q: How much water does DALL-E 3 use?

Each DALL-E 3 query consumes approximately 15 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.

Energy per query

3.0 Wh

CO2 per query

1.2 g

Water per query

15 mL

Processing location

Azure US East / Sweden

Provider

OpenAI

How does DALL-E 3 compare?

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Detailed Breakdown

Energy Consumption

DALL-E 3 consumes approximately 3-11 Wh per image depending on resolution and complexity. We use 3 Wh as a conservative baseline for standard 1024x1024 output. Higher resolutions, inpainting, and variations may consume significantly more. Image generation is inherently more compute-intensive than text because diffusion models perform dozens of iterative denoising steps across a high-dimensional pixel space, with each step requiring a full forward pass through the neural network.

MIT Technology Review — Making an image with AI uses as much energy as charging your phone (2023)Hugging Face / Carnegie Mellon — Power Hungry Processing (2023)

Power Source & Carbon

DALL-E 3 runs on Microsoft Azure, sharing infrastructure with other OpenAI models in US East (Virginia) and Sweden. The Virginia grid's relatively high carbon intensity means each AI-generated image carries a larger carbon footprint than if the same computation happened in a hydro- or nuclear-powered region.

Azure OpenAI Data Zones

Water Usage

At approximately 15 mL per image, DALL-E 3's water use comes from cooling the GPU clusters during the multi-step diffusion process. Generating 100 images would consume about 1.5 liters of water.

UC Riverside — Making AI Less Thirsty (2023)

What does your DALL-E 3 usage cost the planet?

Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use DALL-E 3.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How much energy does DALL-E 3 use per query?

Each DALL-E 3 query consumes approximately 3.0 Wh of energy. This is 10x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).

What is DALL-E 3's carbon footprint?

Based on the carbon intensity of Azure US East / Sweden, each query produces approximately 1.2 g of CO2. The grid in this region has a carbon intensity of 450 g CO2/kWh with 25% renewable energy.