DeepSeek-R1 Environmental Impact
Open-source reasoning model — highest energy use
Per query = Medium reasoning query (~1000 tokens)
Energy per query
29.0 Wh
CO2 per query
14.0 g
Water per query
150 mL
Processing location
China (Hangzhou / Hainan)
Provider
DeepSeek
Category
Text / Chat
Grid carbon intensity
550 g CO2/kWh (30% renewable)
How does DeepSeek-R1 compare?
Detailed Breakdown
Energy Consumption
DeepSeek-R1 is the most energy-intensive model benchmarked, at 29 Wh per query — nearly 100x a Google search. As a reasoning model, it performs extended chain-of-thought computation. Despite using a Mixture-of-Experts architecture designed to be efficient, the sheer scale of reasoning steps and its deployment on older hardware contribute to its high energy draw.
Power Source & Carbon
DeepSeek processes queries on infrastructure in mainland China, primarily in Hangzhou (home of parent company High-Flyer) and an underwater data center off the coast of Hainan Island. China's electricity grid has a carbon intensity of approximately 550 g CO2/kWh — roughly 45% higher than the US average — with about 60% of electricity generated from coal. This makes DeepSeek's carbon emissions per query among the highest of any model.
Water Usage
At over 150 mL per query, DeepSeek-R1 has the highest water consumption of any text model. This is driven by both its extreme energy use (requiring more cooling) and the hot, humid climate at the Hainan underwater data center location. A session of 10 queries would consume over 1.5 liters of water.
What does your DeepSeek-R1 usage cost the planet?
Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use DeepSeek-R1.
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How much energy does DeepSeek-R1 use per query?
Each DeepSeek-R1 query consumes approximately 29.0 Wh of energy. This is 97x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).
What is DeepSeek-R1's carbon footprint?
Based on the carbon intensity of China (Hangzhou / Hainan), each query produces approximately 14.0 g of CO2. The grid in this region has a carbon intensity of 550 g CO2/kWh with 30% renewable energy.
How much water does DeepSeek-R1 use?
Each query consumes approximately 150 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.
How does DeepSeek-R1 compare to a Google search?
A DeepSeek-R1 query uses 97x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while DeepSeek-R1 uses 29.0 Wh.
Technical Details
Architecture
Transformer Mixture-of-Experts (decoder-only)
Parameters
671B
Context window
128,000 tokens
Release date
2025-01-20
Open source
Yes
Training data cutoff
2024-11