Midjourney Environmental Impact
Popular image generation service
- Architecture
- Diffusion model (proprietary)
- Provider
- Midjourney
Energy per query
7.5 Wh
25x more than a Google search (0.3 Wh)
CO2 per query
2.3 g
Google Global Network grid (300 gCO₂/kWh)
Water per query
14 mL
~71 queries to fill 1 litre
Processing location
Google Cloud (US/EU TPU regions)
Provider
Midjourney
Category
Image Generation
Grid carbon intensity
300 g CO2/kWh (64% renewable)
How does Midjourney compare?
Detailed Breakdown
Energy Consumption
Midjourney uses approximately 7.5 Wh per generation cycle (producing 4 images in 30-60 seconds). At ~1300W total system power for H100 inference, a 45-second generation consumes approximately 16 Wh, with conservative estimates at 5-10 Wh per cycle. In Q2 2025, Midjourney migrated most of its inference fleet from NVIDIA A100/H100 clusters to Google Cloud TPU v6e pods, achieving a 65% cost reduction — which likely also reduced energy consumption per image compared to its previous GPU-based infrastructure.
Power Source & Carbon
Midjourney runs on Google Cloud Platform, using both Google TPUs and NVIDIA GPU-based VMs. Google Cloud claims 100% renewable energy matching and uses custom-designed TPUs that are more power-efficient than general-purpose GPUs for AI workloads. The specific regions are not publicly disclosed but likely include US Central, US East, and Europe West.
Water Usage
At approximately 18 mL per image, Midjourney's water footprint is comparable to DALL-E 3. Google's data centers use both evaporative cooling and air-side cooling depending on the climate. Google has committed to replenishing 120% of the water it consumes across its operations by 2030.
About Midjourney
Midjourney is the most opaque major AI service from an environmental standpoint. Unlike Google, Microsoft, and Meta — who publish sustainability reports — Midjourney discloses almost nothing about its infrastructure, energy sources, or carbon footprint. Our energy estimate of 4.2 Wh per image is derived from third-party research and hardware analysis, not provider data. That opacity is itself a sustainability issue: users have no way to make informed choices about their environmental impact when the provider won't share the numbers.
Midjourney benefits from running in Google Global Network, one of the cleaner grid regions in our dataset at 300 gCO₂/kWh with 64% renewable energy. The same model running in a coal-heavy region would produce significantly more carbon per query.
These figures are estimates derived from hardware specifications and API benchmarks — Midjourney has not published official energy data for Midjourney. Actual consumption may vary significantly depending on batching, quantisation, and infrastructure optimisations that we cannot observe from outside.
Midjourney in Context
The efficiency alternative
Imagen 3 performs the same type of task using just 2.5 Wh per query — 67% less energy than Midjourney. For a user sending 25 queries per day, switching would save 45.6 kWh per year.
At global scale
With an estimated 10M+ daily users averaging 10 queries each, Midjourney consumes roughly 750 MWh of electricity per day — enough to power 25000 homes.
Your yearly Midjourney footprint
At 25 queries per day, your annual Midjourney usage consumes 68.4 kWh — a meaningful fraction of household electricity. That produces 21.0 kg of CO₂.
Image vs text: the energy gap
Generating one image with Midjourney uses 25x more energy than a text conversation with ChatGPT. The diffusion process that creates images requires many iterative passes through the model, each refining the image from noise — far more compute per output than generating text one token at a time.
Midjourney Midjourney Family
How energy efficiency has evolved across versions.
What does your Midjourney usage cost the planet?
Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use Midjourney.
Calculate My ComputeFrequently Asked Questions
How much energy does Midjourney use per query?
Each Midjourney query consumes approximately 7.5 Wh of energy. This is 25x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).
What is Midjourney's carbon footprint?
Based on the carbon intensity of Google Cloud (US/EU TPU regions), each query produces approximately 2.3 g of CO2. The grid in this region has a carbon intensity of 300 g CO2/kWh with 64% renewable energy.
How much water does Midjourney use?
Each query consumes approximately 14 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.
How does Midjourney compare to a Google search?
A Midjourney query uses 25x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while Midjourney uses 7.5 Wh.
Technical Details
Architecture
Diffusion model (proprietary)
Release date
2023-12-21
Open source
No