o1 Environmental Impact
OpenAI's first reasoning model with extended chain-of-thought
- Architecture
- Transformer with chain-of-thought reasoning
- Context
- 200,000 tokens
- Provider
- OpenAI
Energy per query
15.0 Wh
50x more than a Google search (0.3 Wh)
CO2 per query
6.5 g
US East (Virginia) grid (450 gCO₂/kWh)
Water per query
55 mL
~18 queries to fill 1 litre
Processing location
Azure US East / Sweden
Provider
OpenAI
Category
Text / Chat
Grid carbon intensity
450 g CO2/kWh (25% renewable)
How does o1 compare?
Detailed Breakdown
Energy Consumption
o1 uses extended chain-of-thought reasoning, generating many hidden "thinking" tokens before producing a response. This makes it significantly more energy-intensive than standard chat models — estimated at ~15 Wh per query, roughly 35x more than GPT-4o. The reasoning overhead varies dramatically by task complexity.
Power Source & Carbon
Runs on Microsoft Azure infrastructure, primarily US East (Virginia) and Sweden Central. The high compute requirements of reasoning models mean significant GPU-hours per query.
Water Usage
At ~55 mL per query, o1's water consumption reflects its heavy GPU utilisation. A single complex reasoning task can consume more water than a glass of water.
About o1
o1 is a text and chat model from OpenAI, released in December 17, 2024. OpenAI's first reasoning model with extended chain-of-thought. Each query uses 15.0 Wh of energy and produces 6.5 g of CO₂. That's 50x the energy of a Google search — reflecting the computational demands of text and chat.
These figures are estimates derived from hardware specifications and API benchmarks — OpenAI has not published official energy data for o1. Actual consumption may vary significantly depending on batching, quantisation, and infrastructure optimisations that we cannot observe from outside.
o1 in Context
The efficiency alternative
Gemini Nano performs the same type of task using just 0.01 Wh per query — 100% less energy than o1. For a user sending 25 queries per day, switching would save 136.7 kWh per year.
Your yearly o1 footprint
At 25 queries per day, your annual o1 usage consumes 136.9 kWh — a meaningful fraction of household electricity. That produces 59.3 kg of CO₂.
What does your o1 usage cost the planet?
Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use o1.
Calculate My ComputeFrequently Asked Questions
How much energy does o1 use per query?
Each o1 query consumes approximately 15.0 Wh of energy. This is 50x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).
What is o1's carbon footprint?
Based on the carbon intensity of Azure US East / Sweden, each query produces approximately 6.5 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 o1 use?
Each query consumes approximately 55 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.
How does o1 compare to a Google search?
A o1 query uses 50x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while o1 uses 15.0 Wh.
Technical Details
Architecture
Transformer with chain-of-thought reasoning
Context window
200,000 tokens
Release date
2024-12-17
Open source
No
Training data cutoff
2024-10