Stable Diffusion XL Energy Usage & Carbon Footprint

Q: What is Stable Diffusion XL's carbon footprint?

Based on the carbon intensity of its inference location (Self-hosted (varies)), each Stable Diffusion XL query produces approximately 1.2g of CO2.

Q: How does Stable Diffusion XL compare to a Google search?

A Stable Diffusion XL query uses 10x more than a traditional Google search in terms of energy consumption. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while Stable Diffusion XL uses 2.9 Wh per query.

Q: How much water does Stable Diffusion XL use?

Each Stable Diffusion XL query consumes approximately 5.4 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.

Energy per query

2.9 Wh

CO2 per query

1.2 g

Water per query

5 mL

Processing location

Self-hosted (varies)

Provider

Stability AI

How does Stable Diffusion XL compare?

View full comparison

Detailed Breakdown

Energy Consumption

Stable Diffusion XL consumes approximately 2.9 Wh per image at standard settings (30 steps, 1024x1024) based on the Luccioni et al. benchmark on A100 hardware. High-quality configurations (50+ steps, upscaling) can reach 11+ Wh. Being open-source, it's often run on consumer GPUs which may be less power-efficient than data center hardware.

Hugging Face / Carnegie Mellon — Power Hungry Processing (2023)MIT Technology Review — AI image energy = phone charge (2023)

Power Source & Carbon

As an open-source model, Stable Diffusion XL is deployed across diverse infrastructure — personal PCs, cloud providers (RunPod, Replicate, AWS, etc.), and on-premises servers. The carbon impact varies enormously. A user running it on a home PC in Sweden (30 g CO2/kWh) produces roughly 25x less carbon than someone running it on a cloud server in India (700 g CO2/kWh). Stability AI's own hosted service has faced financial difficulties and defaulted on payments to AWS and Google Cloud.

Data Center Dynamics — Stability AI defaulted on cloud payments

Water Usage

Water consumption is approximately 50 mL per image when run in a data center. When run locally on a personal computer, water consumption for cooling is effectively zero since PCs use air cooling. This is one of the key environmental advantages of self-hosted open-source models.

Nutanix — How edge AI and cloud support sustainability

What does your Stable Diffusion XL usage cost the planet?

Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use Stable Diffusion XL.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How much energy does Stable Diffusion XL use per query?

Each Stable Diffusion XL query consumes approximately 2.9 Wh of energy. This is 10x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).

What is Stable Diffusion XL's carbon footprint?

Based on the carbon intensity of Self-hosted (varies), each query produces approximately 1.2 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 Stable Diffusion XL use?

Each query consumes approximately 5 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.

How does Stable Diffusion XL compare to a Google search?

A Stable Diffusion XL query uses 10x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while Stable Diffusion XL uses 2.9 Wh.