Qwen 3 235B Environmental Impact
Open-source MoE flagship — strong multilingual performance
- Architecture
- Transformer Mixture-of-Experts (decoder-only)
- Parameters
- 235B
- Context
- 128,000 tokens
- Provider
- Alibaba
Energy per query
1.4 Wh
5x more than a Google search (0.3 Wh)
CO2 per query
0.77 g
China grid (550 gCO₂/kWh)
Water per query
5 mL
~192 queries to fill 1 litre
Processing location
Alibaba Cloud (China / Global)
Provider
Alibaba
Category
Text / Chat
Grid carbon intensity
550 g CO2/kWh (30% renewable)
How does Qwen 3 235B compare?
Detailed Breakdown
Energy Consumption
Qwen 3 235B uses MoE with ~22B active parameters out of 235B total. Estimated at ~1.4 Wh per short query. When served via Alibaba Cloud, it runs on infrastructure comparable in efficiency to major US cloud providers. When self-hosted (it's open-source), energy depends entirely on the hardware.
Power Source & Carbon
Alibaba Cloud serves Qwen primarily from data centres in China, with a grid carbon intensity of approximately 550 gCO₂/kWh. As an open-source model, it can also be self-hosted globally.
Water Usage
Estimated at approximately 5.2 mL per query when served from Chinese data centres, reflecting both the energy requirements and regional cooling infrastructure.
About Qwen 3 235B
Qwen 3 235B is an open-source text and chat model from Alibaba, released in April 28, 2025, that runs well below the category average for energy consumption at 1.4 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 235B parameters, it open-source moe flagship — strong multilingual performance.
These figures are estimates derived from hardware specifications and API benchmarks — Alibaba has not published official energy data for Qwen 3 235B. Actual consumption may vary significantly depending on batching, quantisation, and infrastructure optimisations that we cannot observe from outside.
Qwen 3 235B in Context
Your yearly Qwen 3 235B footprint
At 25 queries per day, your annual Qwen 3 235B usage consumes 12.8 kWh — roughly what a fridge uses in a month. That produces 7.0 kg of CO₂.
Key Insights
Alibaba Qwen Family
How energy efficiency has evolved across versions.
What does your Qwen 3 235B usage cost the planet?
Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use Qwen 3 235B.
Calculate My ComputeFrequently Asked Questions
How much energy does Qwen 3 235B use per query?
Each Qwen 3 235B query consumes approximately 1.4 Wh of energy. This is 5x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).
What is Qwen 3 235B's carbon footprint?
Based on the carbon intensity of Alibaba Cloud (China / Global), each query produces approximately 0.77 g of CO2. The grid in this region has a carbon intensity of 550 g CO2/kWh with 30% renewable energy.
How much water does Qwen 3 235B use?
Each query consumes approximately 5 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.
How does Qwen 3 235B compare to a Google search?
A Qwen 3 235B query uses 5x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while Qwen 3 235B uses 1.4 Wh.
Technical Details
Architecture
Transformer Mixture-of-Experts (decoder-only)
Parameters
235B
Context window
128,000 tokens
Release date
2025-04-28
Open source
Yes
Training data cutoff
2025-03