Browse the orders of magnitude of electricity use, from one question to the planet
An electricity scale, from the watt-hour of a question to the terawatt-hours of the world.
- Calculation
- On the AI Impact Database, its factors and its inputs
- Published
- 20 October 2026, CC BY 4.0 licence
1
Your unit
Express the 16 reference pointsFrom 0.3 Wh to 28,200 TWh
In energyWh, kWh, MWh, GWh, TWhIn text questions1 question = 0.3 WhIn phone charges1 charge = 19 Wh
2
The step to enlarge
Wh
0.3 WhA text question to an AIkWh
6.5 kWhA year of regular AI useMWh
884 MWhChatGPT, a day of questionsGWh
323 GWhChatGPT, a year of questionsTWh
451 TWhAll of France, 20251,000 TWh
28,200 TWhAll the world's electricity, 2025
0.3 WhA text question to an AIkWh6.5 kWhA year of regular AI useMWh884 MWhChatGPT, a day of questionsGWh323 GWhChatGPT, a year of questionsTWh451 TWhAll of France, 20251,000 TWh28,200 TWhAll the world's electricity, 20253
Results, to scale
The smallest reference point0.3WhEpoch AI, 2025
The largest28,200TWhIEA, Electricity 2026
Gap17orders of magnitude× 1,000 from one step to the next
The watt-hour step, to scale
A year of regular AI use6.5 kWh
The same bar, from 0 to 100 Wh
A text question to an AIEpoch AI, 20250.3 Wh
A generated imageLuccioni et al., 20242.9 Wh
A phone chargeEPA, 202619 Wh
An hour of streamed videoIEA, 202077 Wh
A generated 5-second videoDelavande et al., 202590 Wh
Assumptions and sources
0.3 Wha text question to an AIEpoch AI, 202528,200 TWhall the world's electricity, 2025IEA, Electricity 202617 orders of magnitudein between; a phone charge is 19 Wh (EPA, 2026)
Not countedWater and hardware manufacturing; The location, which changes emissions by a factor of 20
The calculation in detail
The values and the limits
The values used
- A text question to an AI
- 0.3 Wh
- A phone charge
- 19 Wh
- The reference points
- 16, sourced one by one
- From one step to the next
- × 1,000
The limits of the calculation
- Each reference point comes from a different source: the scale compares orders of magnitude, not values to the nearest percent.
The 9 sources
One line per document
- 1Epoch AI, How much energy does ChatGPT use?, February 2025
- 2Luccioni, Jernite and Strubell, Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?, 2024
- 3Delavande, Pierrard and Luccioni, Video Killed the Energy Budget, September 2025
- 4EPA, Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator, calculations and references
- 5ADEME, avis sur l'intelligence artificielle générative, July 2026
- 6Google, 2026 Environmental Report, June 2026
- 7IEA, Key Questions on Energy and AI, April 2026
- 8RTE, Bilan électrique 2025, February 2026
- 9IEA, Electricity 2026, February 2026
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