Nemotron 3 Super Environmental Impact
Leading open-weight model — 120B total / 12B active, 2.2x faster than GPT-OSS
- Architecture
- Mixture-of-Experts (12B active)
- Parameters
- 120B
- Context
- 128,000 tokens
- Provider
- NVIDIA
Energy per query
0.45 Wh
2x more than a Google search (0.3 Wh)
CO2 per query
0.20 g
Global Average grid (475 gCO₂/kWh)
Water per query
2 mL
~625 queries to fill 1 litre
Processing location
Self-hosted / NVIDIA NIM
Provider
NVIDIA
Category
Text / Chat
Grid carbon intensity
475 g CO2/kWh (27% renewable)
How does Nemotron 3 Super compare?
Detailed Breakdown
Energy Consumption
Nemotron 3 Super is NVIDIA's flagship open-weight model at 120B total / 12B active parameters (MoE). At ~0.45 Wh per query, it is 2.2x faster than GPT-OSS 120B while matching or exceeding its quality. The sparse architecture activates only 10% of parameters per token, making it extremely efficient. Optimised for NVIDIA hardware via NIM (NVIDIA Inference Microservices).
Power Source & Carbon
Open-weight. Optimised for NVIDIA GPUs via TensorRT-LLM. Available through NVIDIA NIM and popular on OpenRouter.
Water Usage
At ~1.6 mL per query — remarkably low for a model with 120B total parameters thanks to MoE efficiency.
About Nemotron 3 Super
Nemotron 3 Super is an open-source text and chat model from NVIDIA, released in March 11, 2026, that runs well below the category average for energy consumption at 0.45 Wh per query. Because its weights are publicly available, it can be self-hosted on any infrastructure — meaning its carbon footprint depends entirely on where and how you choose to run it. At 120B parameters, it leading open-weight model — 120b total / 12b active, 2.2x faster than gpt-oss.
These figures are estimates derived from hardware specifications and API benchmarks — NVIDIA has not published official energy data for Nemotron 3 Super. Actual consumption may vary significantly depending on batching, quantisation, and infrastructure optimisations that we cannot observe from outside.
Nemotron 3 Super in Context
Your yearly Nemotron 3 Super footprint
At 25 queries per day, your annual Nemotron 3 Super usage consumes 4.1 kWh — comparable to running a LED light bulb for a month. That produces 1.8 kg of CO₂.
Key Insights
What does your Nemotron 3 Super usage cost the planet?
Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use Nemotron 3 Super.
Calculate My ComputeFrequently Asked Questions
How much energy does Nemotron 3 Super use per query?
Each Nemotron 3 Super query consumes approximately 0.45 Wh of energy. This is 2x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).
What is Nemotron 3 Super's carbon footprint?
Based on the carbon intensity of Self-hosted / NVIDIA NIM, each query produces approximately 0.20 g of CO2. The grid in this region has a carbon intensity of 475 g CO2/kWh with 27% renewable energy.
How much water does Nemotron 3 Super use?
Each query consumes approximately 2 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.
How does Nemotron 3 Super compare to a Google search?
A Nemotron 3 Super query uses 2x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while Nemotron 3 Super uses 0.45 Wh.
Technical Details
Architecture
Mixture-of-Experts (12B active)
Parameters
120B
Context window
128,000 tokens
Release date
2026-03-11
Open source
Yes
Training data cutoff
2026-02