• (34) Here Comes the Sun! Why Large Language Models Don’t have to Cost the Earth | LinkedIn

    Item Type Web Page
    Author Paul Walsh
    Date 03 22 2023
    URL https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/here-comes-sun-why-large-language-models-dont-have-cost-paul-walsh/
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:44:37 AM
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • A.I. Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country

    Item Type Newspaper Article
    Author Delger Erdenesanaa
    Abstract Behind the scenes, the technology relies on thousands of specialized computer chips.
    Date 2023-10-10
    Language en-US
    Library Catalog NYTimes.com
    URL https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/climate/ai-could-soon-need-as-much-electricity-as-an-entire-country.html
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:39:59 AM
    Section Climate
    Publication The New York Times
    ISSN 0362-4331
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Alternative and Renewable Energy
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • California
    • Computer Chips
    • Electric Light and Power
    • Global Warming
    • Greenhouse Gas Emissions
    • Law and Legislation
    • Newsom, Gavin
    • NVIDIA Corporation
    • OpenAI Labs
  • AI's carbon footprint - how does the popularity of artificial intelligence affect the climate?

    Item Type Blog Post
    Author Kasia
    Abstract With the development of artificial intelligence (AI), increasing attention is being paid not only to its potential benefits but also to the environmental consequences of its use. One key aspect of interest is AI's carbon footprint - a measure of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the operation of AI-based systems.
    Date 2024-05-08T14:17:41+00:00
    Language en-GB
    URL https://planbe.eco/en/blog/ais-carbon-footprint-how-does-the-popularity-of-artificial-intelligence-affect-the-climate/
    Accessed 5/5/2025, 7:07:55 AM
    Blog Title Plan Be Eco
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Air Travel and Climate: German Plant Produces First Quantities of Carbon-Neutral Synthetic Kerosene

    Item Type Blog Post
    Author Joram Schwartzmann
    Abstract Further reading Fairfuel Criteria Carefree flying with e-kerosene? Illustration: atmosfair fairfuel in comparison to conventional fuel Illustration: CO₂-balance of one tonne of kerosene All images with fuel tanker and video material for TV broadcasters is available here: https://files.atmosfair.de/index.php/s/4fsicpiCmFD9sK2  Press contacts atmosfair und Solarbelt gGmbH: Managing Director Dietrich Brockhagen (brockhagen@atmosfair.de) Wolfdietrich Peiker (Peiker@atmosfair.de, 030-1208480-0) Hauser Exkursionen: Managing
    Date 2024-06-28T08:00:10+00:00
    Language en-US
    Short Title Air Travel and Climate
    URL https://www.atmosfair.de/en/air-travel-and-climate-german-plant-produces-first-quantities-of-carbon-neutral-synthetic-kerosene/
    Accessed 5/4/2025, 8:44:25 AM
    Blog Title atmosfair
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Bitcoin's Growing Energy Problem

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Alex de Vries
    Date 2018-05-16
    Language English
    Library Catalog www.cell.com
    URL https://www.cell.com/joule/abstract/S2542-4351(18)30177-6
    Accessed 5/4/2025, 8:44:38 AM
    Extra Publisher: Elsevier
    Volume 2
    Pages 801-805
    Publication Joule
    DOI 10.1016/j.joule.2018.04.016
    Issue 5
    Journal Abbr Joule
    ISSN 2542-4785, 2542-4351
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • BudgetFusion: Perceptually-Guided Adaptive Diffusion Models

    Item Type Preprint
    Author Qinchan Li
    Author Kenneth Chen
    Author Changyue Su
    Author Qi Sun
    Abstract Diffusion models have shown unprecedented success in the task of text-to-image generation. While these models are capable of generating high-quality and realistic images, the complexity of sequential denoising has raised societal concerns regarding high computational demands and energy consumption. In response, various efforts have been made to improve inference efficiency. However, most of the existing efforts have taken a fixed approach with neural network simplification or text prompt optimization. Are the quality improvements from all denoising computations equally perceivable to humans? We observed that images from different text prompts may require different computational efforts given the desired content. The observation motivates us to present BudgetFusion, a novel model that suggests the most perceptually efficient number of diffusion steps before a diffusion model starts to generate an image. This is achieved by predicting multi-level perceptual metrics relative to diffusion steps. With the popular Stable Diffusion as an example, we conduct both numerical analyses and user studies. Our experiments show that BudgetFusion saves up to five seconds per prompt without compromising perceptual similarity. We hope this work can initiate efforts toward answering a core question: how much do humans perceptually gain from images created by a generative model, per watt of energy?
    Date 2024-12-23
    Short Title BudgetFusion
    Library Catalog arXiv.org
    URL http://arxiv.org/abs/2412.05780
    Accessed 5/5/2025, 8:10:32 AM
    Extra arXiv:2412.05780 [cs]
    DOI 10.48550/arXiv.2412.05780
    Repository arXiv
    Archive ID arXiv:2412.05780
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence
    • Computer Science - Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Calculating the true environmental costs of AI

    Item Type Web Page
    Author Kerry Day
    Abstract The rapid growth of AI brings hope of unprecedented advancements in many sectors but what is its real carbon footprint?
    Date 2025-01-13T08:41:52+00:00
    Language en-US
    URL https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/calculating-the-true-environmental-costs-of-ai/
    Accessed 1/18/2025, 3:51:02 PM
    Website Title Advanced Science News
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Cambridge Blockchain Network Sustainability Index

    Item Type Web Page
    Author Cambridge Digital Assets Programme (CDAP)
    Abstract The Cambridge Blockchain Network Sustainability Index (CBNSI) is created and maintained by the Cambridge Digital Assets Programme (CDAP) Team at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, an independent research institute based at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    Language en
    URL https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci/ghg
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:32:15 AM
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Carbon Emissions and Large Neural Network Training

    Item Type Preprint
    Author David Patterson
    Author Joseph Gonzalez
    Author Quoc Le
    Author Chen Liang
    Author Lluis-Miquel Munguia
    Author Daniel Rothchild
    Author David So
    Author Maud Texier
    Author Jeff Dean
    Abstract The computation demand for machine learning (ML) has grown rapidly recently, which comes with a number of costs. Estimating the energy cost helps measure its environmental impact and finding greener strategies, yet it is challenging without detailed information. We calculate the energy use and carbon footprint of several recent large models-T5, Meena, GShard, Switch Transformer, and GPT-3-and refine earlier estimates for the neural architecture search that found Evolved Transformer. We highlight the following opportunities to improve energy efficiency and CO2 equivalent emissions (CO2e): Large but sparsely activated DNNs can consume <1/10th the energy of large, dense DNNs without sacrificing accuracy despite using as many or even more parameters. Geographic location matters for ML workload scheduling since the fraction of carbon-free energy and resulting CO2e vary ~5X-10X, even within the same country and the same organization. We are now optimizing where and when large models are trained. Specific datacenter infrastructure matters, as Cloud datacenters can be ~1.4-2X more energy efficient than typical datacenters, and the ML-oriented accelerators inside them can be ~2-5X more effective than off-the-shelf systems. Remarkably, the choice of DNN, datacenter, and processor can reduce the carbon footprint up to ~100-1000X. These large factors also make retroactive estimates of energy cost difficult. To avoid miscalculations, we believe ML papers requiring large computational resources should make energy consumption and CO2e explicit when practical. We are working to be more transparent about energy use and CO2e in our future research. To help reduce the carbon footprint of ML, we believe energy usage and CO2e should be a key metric in evaluating models, and we are collaborating with MLPerf developers to include energy usage during training and inference in this industry standard benchmark.
    Date 2021-04-23
    Library Catalog arXiv.org
    URL http://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10350
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:43:18 AM
    Extra arXiv:2104.10350 [cs]
    DOI 10.48550/arXiv.2104.10350
    Repository arXiv
    Archive ID arXiv:2104.10350
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Computer Science - Computers and Society
    • Computer Science - Machine Learning
  • Carbon impact of video streaming

    Item Type Web Page
    Author Carbon Trust
    Abstract This white paper examines the carbon impact of streaming video on demand in order to improve understanding and inform future decisions.
    Date 11 June 2021
    Language en
    URL https://www.carbontrust.com/our-work-and-impact/guides-reports-and-tools/carbon-impact-of-video-streaming
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:31:04 AM
    Website Title https://www.carbontrust.com/our-work-and-impact/guides-reports-and-tools/carbon-impact-of-video-streaming
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Data centres & networks

    Item Type Web Page
    Author International Energy Agency (IEA)
    Abstract As the world becomes increasingly digitalised, data centres and data transmission networks are emerging as an important source of energy demand.
    Language en-GB
    URL https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:33:28 AM
    Website Title IEA
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Energy and AI – Analysis

    Item Type Web Page
    Author International Energy Agency (IEA)
    Abstract Energy and AI - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.
    Date 2025-04-10
    Language en-GB
    URL https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai
    Accessed 5/6/2025, 8:28:58 AM
    Website Title IEA
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP

    Item Type Preprint
    Author Emma Strubell
    Author Ananya Ganesh
    Author Andrew McCallum
    Abstract Recent progress in hardware and methodology for training neural networks has ushered in a new generation of large networks trained on abundant data. These models have obtained notable gains in accuracy across many NLP tasks. However, these accuracy improvements depend on the availability of exceptionally large computational resources that necessitate similarly substantial energy consumption. As a result these models are costly to train and develop, both financially, due to the cost of hardware and electricity or cloud compute time, and environmentally, due to the carbon footprint required to fuel modern tensor processing hardware. In this paper we bring this issue to the attention of NLP researchers by quantifying the approximate financial and environmental costs of training a variety of recently successful neural network models for NLP. Based on these findings, we propose actionable recommendations to reduce costs and improve equity in NLP research and practice.
    Date 2019-06-05
    Library Catalog arXiv.org
    URL http://arxiv.org/abs/1906.02243
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:43:08 AM
    Extra arXiv:1906.02243 [cs]
    DOI 10.48550/arXiv.1906.02243
    Repository arXiv
    Archive ID arXiv:1906.02243
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Computer Science - Computation and Language

    Notes:

    • Comment: In the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). Florence, Italy. July 2019

  • Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Gregory S. Okin
    Abstract In the US, there are more than 163 million dogs and cats that consume, as a significant portion of their diet, animal products and therefore potentially constitute a considerable dietary footprint. Here, the energy and animal-derived product consumption of these pets in the US is evaluated for the first time, as are the environmental impacts from the animal products fed to them, including feces production. In the US, dogs and cats consume about 19% ± 2% of the amount of dietary energy that humans do (203 ± 15 PJ yr-1 vs. 1051 ± 9 PJ yr-1) and 33% ± 9% of the animal-derived energy (67 ± 17 PJ yr-1 vs. 206 ± 2 PJ yr-1). They produce about 30% ± 13%, by mass, as much feces as Americans (5.1 ± Tg yr-1 vs. 17.2 Tg yr-1), and through their diet, constitute about 25–30% of the environmental impacts from animal production in terms of the use of land, water, fossil fuel, phosphate, and biocides. Dog and cat animal product consumption is responsible for release of up to 64 ± 16 million tons CO2-equivalent methane and nitrous oxide, two powerful greenhouse gasses (GHGs). Americans are the largest pet owners in the world, but the tradition of pet ownership in the US has considerable costs. As pet ownership increases in some developing countries, especially China, and trends continue in pet food toward higher content and quality of meat, globally, pet ownership will compound the environmental impacts of human dietary choices. Reducing the rate of dog and cat ownership, perhaps in favor of other pets that offer similar health and emotional benefits would considerably reduce these impacts. Simultaneous industry-wide efforts to reduce overfeeding, reduce waste, and find alternative sources of protein will also reduce these impacts.
    Date Aug. 2, 2017
    Language en
    Library Catalog PLoS Journals
    URL https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0181301
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:34:18 AM
    Extra Publisher: Public Library of Science
    Volume 12
    Pages e0181301
    Publication PLOS ONE
    DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0181301
    Issue 8
    Journal Abbr PLOS ONE
    ISSN 1932-6203
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Body weight
    • Cats
    • Diet
    • Dogs
    • Environmental impacts
    • Food
    • Meat
    • Pets and companion animals
  • Estimating the Carbon Footprint of BLOOM, a 176B Parameter Language Model

    Item Type Preprint
    Author Alexandra Sasha Luccioni
    Author Sylvain Viguier
    Author Anne-Laure Ligozat
    Abstract Progress in machine learning (ML) comes with a cost to the environment, given that training ML models requires significant computational resources, energy and materials. In the present article, we aim to quantify the carbon footprint of BLOOM, a 176-billion parameter language model, across its life cycle. We estimate that BLOOM's final training emitted approximately 24.7 tonnes of~\carboneq~if we consider only the dynamic power consumption, and 50.5 tonnes if we account for all processes ranging from equipment manufacturing to energy-based operational consumption. We also study the energy requirements and carbon emissions of its deployment for inference via an API endpoint receiving user queries in real-time. We conclude with a discussion regarding the difficulty of precisely estimating the carbon footprint of ML models and future research directions that can contribute towards improving carbon emissions reporting.
    Date 2022-11-03
    Library Catalog arXiv.org
    URL http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.02001
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:43:32 AM
    Extra arXiv:2211.02001 [cs]
    DOI 10.48550/arXiv.2211.02001
    Repository arXiv
    Archive ID arXiv:2211.02001
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Computer Science - Machine Learning
  • Evaluating the carbon footprint of NLP methods: a survey and analysis of existing tools

    Item Type Conference Paper
    Author Nesrine Bannour
    Author Sahar Ghannay
    Author Aurélie Névéol
    Author Anne-Laure Ligozat
    Abstract Modern Natural Language Processing (NLP) makes intensive use of deep learning methods because of the accuracy they offer for a variety of applications. Due to the significant environmental impact of deep learning, costbenefit analysis including carbon footprint as well as accuracy measures has been suggested to better document the use of NLP methods for research or deployment. In this paper, we review the tools that are available to measure energy use and CO2 emissions of NLP methods. We describe the scope of the measures provided and compare the use of six tools (carbon tracker, experiment impact tracker, green algorithms, ML CO2 impact, energy usage and cumulator) on named entity recognition experiments performed on different computational set-ups (local server vs. computing facility). Based on these findings, we propose actionable recommendations to accurately measure the environmental impact of NLP experiments.
    Date 2021
    Language en
    Short Title Evaluating the carbon footprint of NLP methods
    Library Catalog DOI.org (Crossref)
    URL https://aclanthology.org/2021.sustainlp-1.2
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:42:14 AM
    Place Virtual
    Publisher Association for Computational Linguistics
    Pages 11-21
    Proceedings Title Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Simple and Efficient Natural Language Processing
    Conference Name Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Simple and Efficient Natural Language Processing
    DOI 10.18653/v1/2021.sustainlp-1.2
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Greenhouse Gas Emissions from a Typical Passenger Vehicle

    Item Type Web Page
    Author OAR US EPA
    Abstract This page answers questions about GHG emissions from passenger vehicles and how these emissions are measured and calculated.
    Date 2016-01-12T16:29:25-05:00
    Language en
    URL https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle
    Accessed 5/4/2025, 8:44:33 AM
    Website Type Overviews and Factsheets
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Hidden carbon costs of the “everywhere war”: Logistics, geopolitical ecology, and the carbon boot-print of the US military

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Oliver Belcher
    Author Patrick Bigger
    Author Ben Neimark
    Author Cara Kennelly
    Abstract This paper examines the US military's impact on climate by analysing the geopolitical ecology of its global logistical supply chains. Our geopolitical ecology framework interrogates the material-ecological metabolic flows (hydrocarbon-based fuels, water, sand, concrete) that shape geopolitical and geoeconomic power relations. We argue that to account for the US military as a major climate actor, one must understand the logistical supply chain that makes its acquisition and consumption of hydrocarbon-based fuels possible. Our paper focuses on the US Defense Logistics Agency – Energy (DLA-E), a large yet virtually unresearched sub-agency within the US Department of Defense. The DLA-E is the primary purchase-point for hydrocarbon-based fuels for the US military, as well as a powerful actor in the global oil market. After outlining our geopolitical ecology approach, we detail the scope of the DLA-E's operations, its supply chain, bureaucratic practices, and the physical infrastructure that facilitates the US military's consumption of hydro-based carbons on a global scale. We show several “path dependencies” – warfighting paradigms, weapons systems, bureaucratic requirements, and waste – that are put in place by military supply chains and undergird a heavy reliance on carbon-based fuels by the US military for years to come. The paper, based on comprehensive records of bulk fuel purchases we have gathered from DLA-E through Freedom of Information Act requests, represents a partial yet robust picture of the geopolitical ecology of American imperialism.
    Date 2020
    Language en
    Short Title Hidden carbon costs of the “everywhere war”
    Library Catalog Wiley Online Library
    URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/tran.12319
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:31:57 AM
    Rights The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2019 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).
    Extra _eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/tran.12319
    Volume 45
    Pages 65-80
    Publication Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
    DOI 10.1111/tran.12319
    Issue 1
    ISSN 1475-5661
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • carbon
    • Defense Logistics Agency
    • geopolitical ecology
    • logistics
    • supply chains
    • US military
  • How widespread use of generative AI for images and video can affect the environment and the science of ecology

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Matthias C. Rillig
    Author India Mansour
    Author Stefan Hempel
    Author Mohan Bi
    Author Birgitta König-Ries
    Author Atoosa Kasirzadeh
    Abstract Generative artificial intelligence (AI) models will have broad impacts on society including the scientific enterprise; ecology and environmental science will be no exception. Here, we discuss the potential opportunities and risks of advanced generative AI for visual material (images and video) for the science of ecology and the environment itself. There are clearly opportunities for positive impacts, related to improved communication, for example; we also see possibilities for ecological research to benefit from generative AI (e.g., image gap filling, biodiversity surveys, and improved citizen science). However, there are also risks, threatening to undermine the credibility of our science, mostly related to actions of bad actors, for example in terms of spreading fake information or committing fraud. Risks need to be mitigated at the level of government regulatory measures, but we also highlight what can be done right now, including discussing issues with the next generation of ecologists and transforming towards radically open science workflows.
    Date 2024
    Language en
    Library Catalog Wiley Online Library
    URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ele.14397
    Accessed 5/6/2025, 9:29:43 AM
    Rights © 2024 The Authors. Ecology Letters published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
    Extra _eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ele.14397
    Volume 27
    Pages e14397
    Publication Ecology Letters
    DOI 10.1111/ele.14397
    Issue 3
    ISSN 1461-0248
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • artificial intelligence
    • environment
    • fraud
    • generative AI
    • science credibility

    Notes:

    • e14397 ELE-01224-2023.R1

  • Life-Cycle Emissions of AI Hardware: A Cradle-To-Grave Approach and Generational Trends

    Item Type Preprint
    Author Ian Schneider
    Author Hui Xu
    Author Stephan Benecke
    Author David Patterson
    Author Keguo Huang
    Author Parthasarathy Ranganathan
    Author Cooper Elsworth
    Abstract Specialized hardware accelerators aid the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), and their efficiency impacts AI's environmental sustainability. This study presents the first publication of a comprehensive AI accelerator life-cycle assessment (LCA) of greenhouse gas emissions, including the first publication of manufacturing emissions of an AI accelerator. Our analysis of five Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) encompasses all stages of the hardware lifespan - from raw material extraction, manufacturing, and disposal, to energy consumption during development, deployment, and serving of AI models. Using first-party data, it offers the most comprehensive evaluation to date of AI hardware's environmental impact. We include detailed descriptions of our LCA to act as a tutorial, road map, and inspiration for other computer engineers to perform similar LCAs to help us all understand the environmental impacts of our chips and of AI. A byproduct of this study is the new metric compute carbon intensity (CCI) that is helpful in evaluating AI hardware sustainability and in estimating the carbon footprint of training and inference. This study shows that CCI improves 3x from TPU v4i to TPU v6e. Moreover, while this paper's focus is on hardware, software advancements leverage and amplify these gains.
    Date 2025-02-01
    Short Title Life-Cycle Emissions of AI Hardware
    Library Catalog arXiv.org
    URL http://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01671
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 8:26:46 AM
    Extra arXiv:2502.01671 [cs]
    DOI 10.48550/arXiv.2502.01671
    Repository arXiv
    Archive ID arXiv:2502.01671
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence
    • Computer Science - Hardware Architecture
  • LLMCO2: Advancing Accurate Carbon Footprint Prediction for LLM Inferences

    Item Type Web Page
    Author Zhenziao Fu
    Date 03 10 2024
    URL https://arxiv.org/html/2410.02950v1
    Accessed 5/5/2025, 7:13:28 AM
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • LLMs and the effect on the environment

    Item Type Web Page
    Author Jacob Parsons
    Abstract Large Language Models impact the environment, but also enable companies’ journeys towards a more sustainable tomorrow. Learn how organizations and LLMs can manage their impact on the environment better.
    Date 17 11 2024
    Language en-US
    URL https://eviden.com/insights/blogs/llms-and-the-effect-on-the-environment/
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 8:12:51 AM
    Website Title Eviden
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Making AI Less "Thirsty": Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models

    Item Type Preprint
    Author Pengfei Li
    Author Jianyi Yang
    Author Mohammad A. Islam
    Author Shaolei Ren
    Abstract The growing carbon footprint of artificial intelligence (AI) has been undergoing public scrutiny. Nonetheless, the equally important water (withdrawal and consumption) footprint of AI has largely remained under the radar. For example, training the GPT-3 language model in Microsoft's state-of-the-art U.S. data centers can directly evaporate 700,000 liters of clean freshwater, but such information has been kept a secret. More critically, the global AI demand is projected to account for 4.2-6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawal in 2027, which is more than the total annual water withdrawal of 4-6 Denmark or half of the United Kingdom. This is concerning, as freshwater scarcity has become one of the most pressing challenges. To respond to the global water challenges, AI can, and also must, take social responsibility and lead by example by addressing its own water footprint. In this paper, we provide a principled methodology to estimate the water footprint of AI, and also discuss the unique spatial-temporal diversities of AI's runtime water efficiency. Finally, we highlight the necessity of holistically addressing water footprint along with carbon footprint to enable truly sustainable AI.
    Date 2025-01-15
    Short Title Making AI Less "Thirsty"
    Library Catalog arXiv.org
    URL http://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03271
    Accessed 1/18/2025, 3:50:39 PM
    Extra arXiv:2304.03271 [cs]
    DOI 10.48550/arXiv.2304.03271
    Repository arXiv
    Archive ID arXiv:2304.03271
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence
    • Computer Science - Machine Learning

    Notes:

    • Comment: Accepted by Communications of the ACM. Source codes available at: https://github.com/Ren-Research/Making-AI-Less-Thirsty

  • Measuring AI’s Carbon Footprint - IEEE Spectrum

    Item Type Web Page
    Author Matthew Hutson
    Abstract New tools track and reduce emissions from machine learning
    Date 26 06 2022
    Language en
    URL https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-carbon-footprint
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:41:43 AM
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Multiple health and environmental impacts of foods

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Michael A Clark
    Author Marco Springmann
    Author Jason Hill
    Author David Tilman
    Abstract Food choices are shifting globally in ways that are negatively affecting both human health and the environment. Here we consider how consuming an additional serving per day of each of 15 foods is associated with 5 health outcomes in adults and 5 aspects of agriculturally driven environmental degradation. We find that while there is substantial variation in the health outcomes of different foods, foods associated with a larger reduction in disease risk for one health outcome are often associated with larger reductions in disease risk for other health outcomes. Likewise, foods with lower impacts on one metric of environmental harm tend to have lower impacts on others. Additionally, of the foods associated with improved health (whole grain cereals, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, olive oil, and fish), all except fish have among the lowest environmental impacts, and fish has markedly lower impacts than red meats and processed meats. Foods associated with the largest negative environmental impacts—unprocessed and processed red meat—are consistently associated with the largest increases in disease risk. Thus, dietary transitions toward greater consumption of healthier foods would generally improve environmental sustainability, although processed foods high in sugars harm health but can have relatively low environmental impacts. These findings could help consumers, policy makers, and food companies to better understand the multiple health and environmental implications of food choices.
    Date 2019-11-12
    Library Catalog pnas.org (Atypon)
    URL https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1906908116
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:32:27 AM
    Extra Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    Volume 116
    Pages 23357-23362
    Publication Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    DOI 10.1073/pnas.1906908116
    Issue 46
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜

    Item Type Conference Paper
    Author Emily M. Bender
    Author Timnit Gebru
    Author Angelina McMillan-Major
    Author Shmargaret Shmitchell
    Abstract The past 3 years of work in NLP have been characterized by the development and deployment of ever larger language models, especially for English. BERT, its variants, GPT-2/3, and others, most recently Switch-C, have pushed the boundaries of the possible both through architectural innovations and through sheer size. Using these pretrained models and the methodology of fine-tuning them for specific tasks, researchers have extended the state of the art on a wide array of tasks as measured by leaderboards on specific benchmarks for English. In this paper, we take a step back and ask: How big is too big? What are the possible risks associated with this technology and what paths are available for mitigating those risks? We provide recommendations including weighing the environmental and financial costs first, investing resources into curating and carefully documenting datasets rather than ingesting everything on the web, carrying out pre-development exercises evaluating how the planned approach fits into research and development goals and supports stakeholder values, and encouraging research directions beyond ever larger language models.
    Date March 1, 2021
    Short Title On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots
    Library Catalog ACM Digital Library
    URL https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922
    Accessed 1/20/2025, 1:00:00 AM
    Place New York, NY, USA
    Publisher Association for Computing Machinery
    ISBN 978-1-4503-8309-7
    Pages 610–623
    Series FAccT '21
    Proceedings Title Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
    DOI 10.1145/3442188.3445922
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Papers - 2019 - Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War | Costs of War

    Item Type Web Page
    Author Costs of War Project (Brown University)
    Abstract The Costs of War Project is a team of 35 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners, and physicians, which began its work in 2011. We use research and a public website to facilitate debate about the costs of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
    Language en
    URL https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/ClimateChangeandCostofWar
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:32:37 AM
    Website Title The Costs of War
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?

    Item Type Conference Paper
    Author Alexandra Sasha Luccioni
    Author Yacine Jernite
    Author Emma Strubell
    Abstract Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of commercial AI products based on generative, multi-purpose AI systems promising a unified approach to building machine learning (ML) models into technology. However, this ambition of ``generality'' comes at a steep cost to the environment, given the amount of energy these systems require and the amount of carbon that they emit. In this work, we propose the first systematic comparison of the ongoing inference cost of various categories of ML systems, covering both task-specific (i.e. finetuned models that carry out a single task) and `general-purpose' models, (i.e. those trained for multiple tasks). We measure deployment cost as the amount of energy and carbon required to perform 1,000 inferences on representative benchmark dataset using these models. We find that multi-purpose, generative architectures are orders of magnitude more expensive than task-specific systems for a variety of tasks, even when controlling for the number of model parameters. We conclude with a discussion around the current trend of deploying multi-purpose generative ML systems, and caution that their utility should be more intentionally weighed against increased costs in terms of energy and emissions. All the data from our study can be accessed via an interactive demo to carry out further exploration and analysis.
    Date 2024-06-03
    Short Title Power Hungry Processing
    Library Catalog arXiv.org
    URL http://arxiv.org/abs/2311.16863
    Accessed 5/4/2025, 8:40:56 AM
    Extra arXiv:2311.16863 [cs]
    Pages 85-99
    Proceedings Title The 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
    DOI 10.1145/3630106.3658542
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Computer Science - Machine Learning
  • Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Max J. Krause
    Author Thabet Tolaymat
    Abstract There are now hundreds of cryptocurrencies in existence and the technological backbone of many of these currencies is blockchain—a digital ledger of transactions. The competitive process of adding blocks to the chain is computation-intensive and requires large energy input. Here we demonstrate a methodology for calculating the minimum power requirements of several cryptocurrency networks and the energy consumed to produce one US dollar’s (US$) worth of digital assets. From 1 January 2016 to 30 June 2018, we estimate that mining Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero consumed an average of 17, 7, 7 and 14 MJ to generate one US$, respectively. Comparatively, conventional mining of aluminium, copper, gold, platinum and rare earth oxides consumed 122, 4, 5, 7 and 9 MJ to generate one US$, respectively, indicating that (with the exception of aluminium) cryptomining consumed more energy than mineral mining to produce an equivalent market value. While the market prices of the coins are quite volatile, the network hashrates for three of the four cryptocurrencies have trended consistently upward, suggesting that energy requirements will continue to increase. During this period, we estimate mining for all 4 cryptocurrencies was responsible for 3–15 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
    Date 2018-11
    Language en
    Library Catalog www.nature.com
    URL https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0152-7
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:34:07 AM
    Rights 2018 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited
    Extra Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
    Volume 1
    Pages 711-718
    Publication Nature Sustainability
    DOI 10.1038/s41893-018-0152-7
    Issue 11
    Journal Abbr Nat Sustain
    ISSN 2398-9629
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Energy and society
    • Environmental impact
  • The carbon emissions of writing and illustrating are lower for AI than for humans

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Bill Tomlinson
    Author Rebecca W. Black
    Author Donald J. Patterson
    Author Andrew W. Torrance
    Abstract As AI systems proliferate, their greenhouse gas emissions are an increasingly important concern for human societies. In this article, we present a comparative analysis of the carbon emissions associated with AI systems (ChatGPT, BLOOM, DALL-E2, Midjourney) and human individuals performing equivalent writing and illustrating tasks. Our findings reveal that AI systems emit between 130 and 1500 times less CO2e per page of text generated compared to human writers, while AI illustration systems emit between 310 and 2900 times less CO2e per image than their human counterparts. Emissions analyses do not account for social impacts such as professional displacement, legality, and rebound effects. In addition, AI is not a substitute for all human tasks. Nevertheless, at present, the use of AI holds the potential to carry out several major activities at much lower emission levels than can humans.
    Date 2024-02-14
    Language en
    Library Catalog www.nature.com
    URL https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x
    Accessed 5/5/2025, 7:08:03 AM
    Rights 2024 The Author(s)
    Extra Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
    Volume 14
    Pages 3732
    Publication Scientific Reports
    DOI 10.1038/s41598-024-54271-x
    Issue 1
    Journal Abbr Sci Rep
    ISSN 2045-2322
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • Climate-change mitigation
    • Computer science
  • The Carbon Footprint of Bitcoin

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Christian Stoll
    Author Lena Klaaßen
    Author Ulrich Gallersdörfer
    Abstract Participation in the Bitcoin blockchain validation process requires specialized hardware and vast amounts of electricity, which translates into a significant carbon footprint. Here, we demonstrate a methodology for estimating the power consumption associated with Bitcoin’s blockchain based on IPO filings of major hardware manufacturers, insights on mining facility operations, and mining pool compositions. We then translate our power consumption estimate into carbon emissions, using the localization of IP addresses. We determine the annual electricity consumption of Bitcoin, as of November 2018, to be 45.8 TWh and estimate that annual carbon emissions range from 22.0 to 22.9 MtCO2. This means that the emissions produced by Bitcoin sit between the levels produced by the nations of Jordan and Sri Lanka, which is comparable to the level of Kansas City. With this article, we aim to gauge the external costs of Bitcoin and inform the broader debate on the costs and benefits of cryptocurrencies.
    Date 2019-07-17
    Library Catalog ScienceDirect
    URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435119302557
    Accessed 5/5/2025, 8:24:49 AM
    Volume 3
    Pages 1647-1661
    Publication Joule
    DOI 10.1016/j.joule.2019.05.012
    Issue 7
    Journal Abbr Joule
    ISSN 2542-4351
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • The carbon footprint of ChatGPT

    Item Type Blog Post
    Author Chris Pointon
    Abstract An estimate of the carbon emissions from OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot service
    Date 2023-04-19T15:13:42.548Z
    Language en
    URL https://medium.com/@chrispointon/the-carbon-footprint-of-chatgpt-e1bc14e4cc2a
    Accessed 5/5/2025, 7:21:42 AM
    Blog Title Medium
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Seth Wynes
    Author Kimberly A Nicholas
    Abstract Current anthropogenic climate change is the result of greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere, which records the aggregation of billions of individual decisions. Here we consider a broad range of individual lifestyle choices and calculate their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, based on 148 scenarios from 39 sources. We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less). Though adolescents poised to establish lifelong patterns are an important target group for promoting high-impact actions, we find that ten high school science textbooks from Canada largely fail to mention these actions (they account for 4% of their recommended actions), instead focusing on incremental changes with much smaller potential emissions reductions. Government resources on climate change from the EU, USA, Canada, and Australia also focus recommendations on lower-impact actions. We conclude that there are opportunities to improve existing educational and communication structures to promote the most effective emission-reduction strategies and close this mitigation gap.
    Date 2017-07
    Language en
    Short Title The climate mitigation gap
    Library Catalog Institute of Physics
    URL https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:50:15 AM
    Extra Publisher: IOP Publishing
    Volume 12
    Pages 074024
    Publication Environmental Research Letters
    DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
    Issue 7
    Journal Abbr Environ. Res. Lett.
    ISSN 1748-9326
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Seth Wynes
    Author Kimberly A Nicholas
    Abstract Current anthropogenic climate change is the result of greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere, which records the aggregation of billions of individual decisions. Here we consider a broad range of individual lifestyle choices and calculate their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, based on 148 scenarios from 39 sources. We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less). Though adolescents poised to establish lifelong patterns are an important target group for promoting high-impact actions, we find that ten high school science textbooks from Canada largely fail to mention these actions (they account for 4% of their recommended actions), instead focusing on incremental changes with much smaller potential emissions reductions. Government resources on climate change from the EU, USA, Canada, and Australia also focus recommendations on lower-impact actions. We conclude that there are opportunities to improve existing educational and communication structures to promote the most effective emission-reduction strategies and close this mitigation gap.
    Date 2017-07
    Language en
    Short Title The climate mitigation gap
    Library Catalog Institute of Physics
    URL https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
    Accessed 1/18/2025, 3:50:54 PM
    Extra Publisher: IOP Publishing
    Volume 12
    Pages 074024
    Publication Environmental Research Letters
    DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
    Issue 7
    Journal Abbr Environ. Res. Lett.
    ISSN 1748-9326
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
  • The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000 to 2018

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author D.S. Lee
    Author D.W. Fahey
    Author A. Skowron
    Author M.R. Allen
    Author U. Burkhardt
    Author Q. Chen
    Author S.J. Doherty
    Author S. Freeman
    Author P.M. Forster
    Author J. Fuglestvedt
    Author A. Gettelman
    Author R.R. De León
    Author L.L. Lim
    Author M.T. Lund
    Author R.J. Millar
    Author B. Owen
    Author J.E. Penner
    Author G. Pitari
    Author M.J. Prather
    Author R. Sausen
    Author L.J. Wilcox
    Abstract Global aviation operations contribute to anthropogenic climate change via a complex set of processes that lead to a net surface warming. Of importance are aviation emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), water vapor, soot and sulfate aerosols, and increased cloudiness due to contrail formation. Aviation grew strongly over the past decades (1960–2018) in terms of activity, with revenue passenger kilometers increasing from 109 to 8269 billion km yr−1, and in terms of climate change impacts, with CO2 emissions increasing by a factor of 6.8 to 1034 Tg CO2 yr−1. Over the period 2013–2018, the growth rates in both terms show a marked increase. Here, we present a new comprehensive and quantitative approach for evaluating aviation climate forcing terms. Both radiative forcing (RF) and effective radiative forcing (ERF) terms and their sums are calculated for the years 2000–2018. Contrail cirrus, consisting of linear contrails and the cirrus cloudiness arising from them, yields the largest positive net (warming) ERF term followed by CO2 and NOx emissions. The formation and emission of sulfate aerosol yields a negative (cooling) term. The mean contrail cirrus ERF/RF ratio of 0.42 indicates that contrail cirrus is less effective in surface warming than other terms. For 2018 the net aviation ERF is +100.9 milliwatts (mW) m−2 (5–95% likelihood range of (55, 145)) with major contributions from contrail cirrus (57.4 mW m−2), CO2 (34.3 mW m−2), and NOx (17.5 mW m−2). Non-CO2 terms sum to yield a net positive (warming) ERF that accounts for more than half (66%) of the aviation net ERF in 2018. Using normalization to aviation fuel use, the contribution of global aviation in 2011 was calculated to be 3.5 (4.0, 3.4) % of the net anthropogenic ERF of 2290 (1130, 3330) mW m−2. Uncertainty distributions (5%, 95%) show that non-CO2 forcing terms contribute about 8 times more than CO2 to the uncertainty in the aviation net ERF in 2018. The best estimates of the ERFs from aviation aerosol-cloud interactions for soot and sulfate remain undetermined. CO2-warming-equivalent emissions based on global warming potentials (GWP* method) indicate that aviation emissions are currently warming the climate at approximately three times the rate of that associated with aviation CO2 emissions alone. CO2 and NOx aviation emissions and cloud effects remain a continued focus of anthropogenic climate change research and policy discussions., Image 1 , • Global aviation warms Earth's surface through both CO2 and net non-CO2 contributions. • Global aviation contributes a few percent to anthropogenic radiative forcing. • Non-CO2 impacts comprise about 2/3 of the net radiative forcing. • Comprehensive and quantitative calculations of aviation effects are presented. • Data are made available to analyze past, present and future aviation climate forcing.
    Date 2021-1-1
    Library Catalog PubMed Central
    URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7468346/
    Accessed 5/5/2025, 7:41:21 AM
    Extra PMID: 32895604 PMCID: PMC7468346
    Volume 244
    Pages 117834
    Publication Atmospheric Environment (Oxford, England : 1994)
    DOI 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2020.117834
    Journal Abbr Atmos Environ (1994)
    ISSN 1352-2310
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Attachments

    • PubMed Central Link
  • The Generative AI Race Has a Dirty Secret

    Item Type Magazine Article
    Author Chris Stokel-Walker
    Abstract Integrating large language models into search engines could mean a fivefold increase in computing power and huge carbon emissions.
    Language en-US
    Library Catalog www.wired.com
    URL https://www.wired.com/story/the-generative-ai-search-race-has-a-dirty-secret/
    Accessed 5/3/2025, 7:43:59 AM
    Extra Section: tags
    Publication Wired
    ISSN 1059-1028
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • algorithms
    • artificial intelligence
    • chatgpt
    • climate change
    • environment
    • magazine-31.05
  • The Water Footprint of Diets: A Global Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

    Item Type Journal Article
    Author Francesca Harris
    Author Cami Moss
    Author Edward J M Joy
    Author Ruth Quinn
    Author Pauline F D Scheelbeek
    Author Alan D Dangour
    Author Rosemary Green
    Abstract Agricultural water requirements differ between foods. Population-level dietary preferences are therefore a major determinant of agricultural water use. The “water footprint” (WF) represents the volume of water consumed in the production of food items, separated by water source; blue WF represents ground and surface water use, and green WF represents rain water use. We systematically searched for published studies using the WF to assess the water use of diets. We used the available evidence to quantify the WF of diets in different countries, and grouped diets in patterns according to study definition. “Average” patterns equated to those currently consumed, whereas “healthy” patterns included those recommended in national dietary guidelines. We searched 7 online databases and identified 41 eligible studies that reported the dietary green WF, blue WF, or total WF (green plus blue) (1964 estimates for 176 countries). The available evidence suggests that, on average, European (170 estimates) and Oceanian (18 estimates) dietary patterns have the highest green WFs (median per capita: 2999 L/d and 2924 L/d, respectively), whereas Asian dietary patterns (98 estimates) have the highest blue WFs (median: 382 L/d per capita). Foods of animal origin are major contributors to the green WFs of diets, whereas cereals, fruits, nuts, and oils are major contributors to the blue WF of diets. “Healthy” dietary patterns (425 estimates) had green WFs that were 5.9% (95% CI: −7.7, −4.0) lower than those of “average” dietary patterns, but they did not differ in their blue WFs. Our review suggests that changes toward healthier diets could reduce total water use of agriculture, but would not affect blue water use. Rapid dietary change and increasing water security concerns underscore the need for a better understanding of the amount and type of water used in food production to make informed policy decisions.
    Date 2020-03-01
    Short Title The Water Footprint of Diets
    Library Catalog ScienceDirect
    URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2161831322002629
    Accessed 1/20/2025, 1:07:31 PM
    Volume 11
    Pages 375-386
    Publication Advances in Nutrition
    DOI 10.1093/advances/nmz091
    Issue 2
    Journal Abbr Advances in Nutrition
    ISSN 2161-8313
    Date Added 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM
    Modified 5/6/2025, 4:14:43 PM

    Tags:

    • environmental footprint
    • food consumption
    • planetary health
    • sustainable diets
    • water use