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Database entryUsesLevel 4 of 6 occupation or activityOccupation or activity, level 4 of 6Used to calculate 5 entries, level 6Calculated with 12 entries, levels 1 and 3Database structure

ChatGPT Plus, 1 year

A year of ChatGPT Plus subscription at the chosen level of use: about 10 deep research tasks, 1,900 questions to ChatGPT, 150 conversations of 10 exchanges, and 8 other tasks. Projet Celsius estimate.

  • Text and conversation account for 83% of emissions: "Deep research" weighs as much as 330 quick questions.
  • About 2,500 requests to AI over the year, or 6.8 per working day.
  • An estimate: the frequencies and the share done with AI are our assumptions.
Calculated with
Used to calculate

Breakdown of emissions by item

1.4 kgCO2e in total: 3 kWh of electricity × 458 gCO2e/kWh (servers worldwide).

Inputs of the calculation 8

Read 1,000 tokens, Re-read from cache, Write, with reasoning, Second of video, Question to ChatGPT, Conversation of 10 exchanges, Deep research, Clip of 5 seconds

How the calculation is built

A year of ChatGPT Plus subscription at the chosen level of use: questions, conversations, writing, images, deep research, a few videos; with the "agents" tooling, hours of coding agent. The typical use is an assumption by Projet Celsius.

Comparison with other occupations and activities

See the full list

Characteristics

Unit1 subscription, 1 year : 365 days
Default locationworld, 458 gCO2e/kWh (Ember 2025, life cycle); 11 other locations to choose from
Countedthe tasks done with AI over a year, including data centre cooling
Not countedserver manufacturing, model training, the person's device and the subscription price
Statusestimated
All the characteristics identifier, version, rule for the value, sources, licence
IdentifierIA-0319, projetcelsius.com/en/ai/database/IA-0319/
Version0.1 of 2 November 2026
CategoryOccupations and activities, one person, one year
Choice of the selected valuedatabase calculation from the entries this one is made of, at the quantities of the unit
Sourcescalculation of the database
LicenceCC BY 4.0
Projet Celsius, environmental strategy consultancy

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