Report reveals Google consumes 56 times more electricity per year than ChatGPT

Amid growing concerns about the environmental impact and long-term sustainability of tech firms’ global operations, NewsworthyData has shared a new report by BestBrokers. The recent report reveals the staggering electricity consumption of the world’s largest tech companies.

RELATED: ChatGPT’s annual energy consumption could power almost all US electric vehicles

With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and the increasing energy demands of data centres, the tech industry’s power consumption is skyrocketing. To put this massive energy use into perspective, the team at BestBrokers analysed the annual electricity consumption of the ten largest tech firms by market cap that publicly disclose such information. We then compared their power usage to that of entire countries, based on the latest U.S. Energy Information Administration data. We also looked at what else could be powered with the energy these firms use in a single year, including AI operations.

Our findings reveal that a total of 129 countries and territories each consume less power per year than Google alone, which used 25,307 gigawatt-hours in its last fiscal year. Among them is Libya, which uses around 25,000 gigawatt-hours annually with a population of over 7 million people. For further context, Google consumed 56 times more electricity last year to keep its global operations running than ChatGPT uses anually to handle user prompts. This estimate is based on ChatGPT’s 200 million weekly active users each making about 15 queries per week, with each query consuming roughly 2.9 watt-hours of electricity.

Key takeaways from our report:

• In its 2023 fiscal year, Google used 25,307 GWh of electricity. This is more than Libya’s total annual consumption of 25,000 GWh, a country home to 7.4 million people.
• We also calculated that ChatGPT consumes around 453.6 GWh of electricity every year to handle 156.4 billion prompts. This means Google consumes 56 more electricity annually to keep its global operations running than OpenAI’s chatbot to generate responses. When comparing the power usage from user queries alone, Google consumes 930 GWh annually for its 3.1 trillion searches, which is just twice as much as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
• Samsung, on the other hand, consumed 29,956 GWh of electricity across its global business sites in its last fiscal year. That’s nearly as much as the entire energy consumption of Ireland (5.2 million people) or Serbia (6.7 million people), each using around 31,000 GWh per year. Samsung also consumes more power than Ecuador (18.3 million people, 28,000 GWh) or Slovakia (5.6 million people, 26,000 GWh).
• Meanwhile, TSMC’s power consumption surpasses Azerbaijan’s yearly total of 24,000 gigawatt-hours, a nation of 10.7 million people. The energy needed by TSMC, the largest semiconductor maker in the world, reached 24,775 gigawatt-hours in 2023.
• Microsoft’s power usage of 23,568 gigawatt-hours last year outpaced the entire electricity consumption of countries like Jordan (20,000 GWh, 11.2 million people), Iceland (19,000 GWh, 364 hundred people), Puerto Rico (18,000 GWh, 3 million people), or Croatia (17,000 GWh, 4.2 million people).
• Facebook’s parent company Meta wasn’t far behind, consuming 15,325 gigawatt-hours in 2023, more than Angola, Burma, Cuba, Sudan, or Zambia, each using roughly 15,000 gigawatt-hours annually.
• China’s Tencent, meanwhile, used 5,115 gigawatt-hours, about as much as Brunei (5,200 GWh, 491.9 hundred people). Tencent also exceeded the total electricity demands of Cyprus (5,000 GWh/year, 1.3 million people).
• Apple consumed 3,487 gigawatt-hours in its last fiscal year, placing its energy needs on par with nations like Jamaica (3,400 GWh/year, 2.8 million people). The iPhone maker also required more electricity than countries like Montenegro (3,000 GWh/year, 599.8 hundred people) or Malta (2,800 GWh/year, 469.7 hundred people).
• NVIDIA, with 613 gigawatt-hours of annual consumption, rivals countries such as Bermuda, Greenland, or the Seychelles (all of which use around 600 GWh per year).
• ASML and Broadcom reported electricity usage of 480 and 417 gigawatt-hours respectively. This exceeds the annual energy demands of small island nations like Cabo Verde or Saint Lucia, each using 300 to 400 gigawatt-hours. Interestingly, ChatGPT consumes more power annually to generate responses than semiconductor giant Broadcom used for its global facilities in 2023.

In addition, Google consumed enough energy in its last fiscal year to charge a mind-blowing 349.6 million electric vehicles or provide electricity to 2.4 million U.S. households for a full year. If Google were to use all of this electricity to mine Bitcoins, it could yield around 29,714 coins. On the AI front, the same amount of electricity could process 8.7 trillion ChatGPT prompts.

For more details and the methodology behind our calculations, please check out the full report. You’re welcome to use any data or graphics, but please make sure to link back to the original work.

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