Focus · AI and its hardware
Metals and resources
The hardware share of AI in published life cycle assessments, and the materials it requires.
By Projet Celsius
Focus areaSemiconductorsThe cost of manufacturing AI chips and servers.Open the focus area →You are hereMetals and resourcesThe hardware share of AI in published life cycle assessments, and the materials it requires.
Focus areaRecycling and reuseThe lifespan of devices and the electronic waste that AI could add.See its charts →The Chuquicamata copper mine, in northern Chile, in 2016. Photo Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Charts and maps of the focus area
Charts and maps →Focus area
ChartOne model · 2025Life cycle assessment of Mistral Large 2climatewater86%of emissions, share from computingMistral AI, Carbone 4 and ADEME, 2025ChartOne server · Nvidia data sheetManufacture of an AI server, by component42%memory, out of 1,312 kgCO2eNvidia, HGX H100 data sheetChartOne model · logTraining emissions, 4 published assessmentsOLMo, trial runs159OLMo312GPT-3552Llama 3.111,390 t11,390tCO2efor Llama 3.1Morrison et al.; Patterson et al.; Meta
Analyses and articles
Water
HardwareSources for this focus area
- Mistral AI, with Carbone 4 and ADEME, Our contribution to a global environmental standard for AI, July 2025 ↗
- Nvidia, HGX H100 Product Carbon Footprint Summary ↗
- Nvidia, HGX B200 Product Carbon Footprint Summary ↗
- Morrison et al., Holistically Evaluating the Environmental Impact of Creating Language Models, 2025 ↗
- Patterson et al., Carbon Emissions and Large Neural Network Training, 2021 ↗
- Meta, Llama 3.1 model card ↗
Across the hub
AI Impact DatabaseAll the figures, their methodology and their sources.
AI Ranking10 assistants rated out of 100: performance, ethics and environment.
AnalysesThe signed pieces: analyses, viewpoints, "Where does this figure come from?".
Charts and mapsThe reference visuals, with their data and sources.
ToolsOpen calculations, your assumptions on the left, the result on the right.
A question about a figure?
An error, a source to add, a methodology question, a press request: write to us. Guillaume Pakula, Clément Reynaud, Sébastien Pierfederici and Alexandre Veilly will reply.
Write to us →
Projet Celsius, which runs this hub, also helps companies measure and reduce the footprint of their AI use.
Accounting for AI in your Bilan Carbone® ↗
