o3-mini Environmental Impact
Cost-efficient reasoning model with adjustable thinking effort
- Architecture
- Transformer with adaptive chain-of-thought
- Context
- 200,000 tokens
- Provider
- OpenAI
Energy per query
2.0 Wh
7x more than a Google search (0.3 Wh)
CO2 per query
0.90 g
US East (Virginia) grid (450 gCO₂/kWh)
Water per query
8 mL
~125 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 o3-mini compare?
Detailed Breakdown
Energy Consumption
o3-mini offers adjustable reasoning effort (low/medium/high), allowing users to trade quality for efficiency. At medium effort, we estimate ~2 Wh per query — significantly more efficient than o1-mini while often matching its reasoning quality. High effort can use 3-5x more.
Power Source & Carbon
Runs on Microsoft Azure infrastructure. The adaptive effort feature means energy consumption varies significantly based on task difficulty settings.
Water Usage
At ~8 mL per query (medium effort), o3-mini is more water-efficient than its predecessors. Low-effort queries use proportionally less.
About o3-mini
o3-mini is a text and chat model from OpenAI, released in January 31, 2025. Cost-efficient reasoning model with adjustable thinking effort. Each query uses 2.0 Wh of energy and produces 0.90 g of CO₂. That's 7x 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 o3-mini. Actual consumption may vary significantly depending on batching, quantisation, and infrastructure optimisations that we cannot observe from outside.
o3-mini in Context
At global scale
With an estimated 10M+ daily users averaging 10 queries each, o3-mini consumes roughly 200 MWh of electricity per day — enough to power 6667 homes.
Your yearly o3-mini footprint
At 25 queries per day, your annual o3-mini usage consumes 18.3 kWh — roughly what a fridge uses in a month. That produces 8.2 kg of CO₂.
OpenAI o3 Family
How energy efficiency has evolved across versions.
What does your o3-mini usage cost the planet?
Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use o3-mini.
Calculate My ComputeFrequently Asked Questions
How much energy does o3-mini use per query?
Each o3-mini query consumes approximately 2.0 Wh of energy. This is 7x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).
What is o3-mini's carbon footprint?
Based on the carbon intensity of Azure US East / Sweden, each query produces approximately 0.90 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 o3-mini use?
Each query consumes approximately 8 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.
How does o3-mini compare to a Google search?
A o3-mini query uses 7x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while o3-mini uses 2.0 Wh.
Technical Details
Architecture
Transformer with adaptive chain-of-thought
Context window
200,000 tokens
Release date
2025-01-31
Open source
No
Training data cutoff
2024-10