Overview

• A new technical report estimates the median Gemini text prompt uses 0.24 Wh of electricity, emits 0.03 gCO2e, and consumes 0.26 mL of water.
• Google reports roughly 33x lower per‑prompt energy use and about 44x lower per‑prompt carbon footprint over the past year, citing improvements across models, software, hardware and operations.
• The methodology attributes about 58% of per‑prompt energy to TPUs, 25% to host CPU and memory, 10% to idle backup machines, and 8% to data‑center overhead such as cooling and power conversion.
• The analysis covers text inference only and excludes training and multimodal tasks, uses market‑based emissions accounting, omits indirect water used to generate electricity, and does not disclose token counts or total query volume.
• Experts welcome greater transparency but note the figures are not independently vetted, and reporting shows Google’s overall emissions have risen roughly 48% since 2019 even as per‑prompt efficiency improves.