Study Debunks Major Myth: AI’s Energy Usage Is Significantly Less Than Feared

AI Machine Learning Global Earth Human Robot — A new study finds that AI’s energy demands may have a much smaller climate impact than expected, with hints that AI could even accelerate greener technologies. Credit: Shutterstock

Energy consumption in the U.S. is changing how people perceive the environmental risks associated with AI.

New research challenges the common assumption that artificial intelligence

places a heavy burden on the climate. The findings indicate that current levels of AI use have only a small impact on global greenhouse gas emissions and could even support both environmental progress and economic growth.

To investigate these effects, scientists from the University of Waterloo and the Georgia Institute of Technology merged data on the U.S. economic system with estimates of how widely AI is being adopted across different industries. This approach allowed them to project the potential environmental outcomes if AI continues to expand at its present pace.

Information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that 83 percent of the nation still relies on petroleum, coal and natural gas, fuels that release heat-trapping emissions when used. The researchers determined that although AI-related electricity consumption in the United States is comparable to the total energy use of Iceland, this amount remains too small to register meaningfully at the national or global level.

“It is important to note that the increase in energy use is not going to be uniform. It’s going to be felt more in the places where electricity is produced to power the data centers,” said Dr. Juan Moreno-Cruz, a professor in the Faculty of Environment at Waterloo and Canada Research Chair in Energy Transitions. “If you look at that energy from the local perspective, that’s a big deal because some places could see double the amount of electricity output and emissions. But at a larger scale, AI’s use of energy won’t be noticeable.”

Local Effects and Broader Opportunities

While this paper did not examine the effects on local economies where the data centers are located, the researchers found some encouraging results.

“For people who believe that the use of AI will be a major problem for the climate and think we should avoid it, we’re offering a different perspective,” Moreno-Cruz said. “The effects on climate are not that significant, and we can use AI to develop green technologies or to improve existing ones.”

To reach their conclusions, environmental economists Moreno-Cruz and Dr. Anthony Harding examined different sectors of an economy, the jobs within those sectors, and what portion of them could be done by AI.

Moreno-Cruz and Harding plan to repeat the study for other countries to measure the impacts of AI adoption in other parts of the world.

Reference: “Watts and bots: the energy implications of AI adoption” by Anthony R Harding and Juan Moreno-Cruz, 11 November 2025, Environmental Research Letters.
DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ae0e3b

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