GPT-4.1 Environmental Impact
OpenAI's standard mid-tier model
Per query = Short query (~300 tokens)
Energy per query
0.45 Wh
CO2 per query
0.20 g
Water per query
2 mL
Processing location
Azure US East / Sweden
Provider
OpenAI
Category
Text / Chat
Grid carbon intensity
450 g CO2/kWh (25% renewable)
How does GPT-4.1 compare?
Detailed Breakdown
Energy Consumption
GPT-4.1 consumes approximately 0.45 Wh per short query — similar to GPT-4o. API pricing ($2.00/M input, $8.00/M output) suggests comparable compute requirements. It includes improved coding and instruction-following capabilities over GPT-4o without a significant increase in model size.
Power Source & Carbon
Runs on Microsoft Azure infrastructure, primarily in US East (Virginia) and Sweden Central.
Water Usage
Approximately 1.6 mL per query, consistent with other mid-size OpenAI models on Azure infrastructure.
What does your GPT-4.1 usage cost the planet?
Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use GPT-4.1.
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How much energy does GPT-4.1 use per query?
Each GPT-4.1 query consumes approximately 0.45 Wh of energy. This is 2x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).
What is GPT-4.1's carbon footprint?
Based on the carbon intensity of Azure US East / Sweden, each query produces approximately 0.20 g of CO2. The grid in this region has a carbon intensity of 450 g CO2/kWh with 25% renewable energy.
How much water does GPT-4.1 use?
Each query consumes approximately 2 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.
How does GPT-4.1 compare to a Google search?
A GPT-4.1 query uses 2x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while GPT-4.1 uses 0.45 Wh.
Technical Details
Architecture
Dense Transformer (decoder-only)
Context window
1,047,576 tokens
Release date
2025-04-14
Open source
No
Training data cutoff
2025-03