Estimated CO₂ from AI usage
at Northeastern
|
This Semester
Today
kg CO₂ from AI at NU today
This Week
kg CO₂ across 7 days
This Semester
kg CO₂ since Jan 13, 2026
What This Means
NU's semester AI footprint equals…
÷ 1,500 kg CO₂ per Boston → London flight
÷ 70 kg CO₂ per round trip
÷ 0.036 kg CO₂ per hour (SD, wired)
Equivalencies are illustrative order-of-magnitude comparisons. Sources: ICAO carbon calculator, EPA emissions factors, Carbon Trust streaming report (2023).
Methodology
NUCarbon uses a bottom-up model combining published AI energy benchmarks (IEA 2024, Patterson et al. 2021) with self-reported usage rates from EDUCAUSE surveys across R1 universities. The New England ISO grid intensity of 0.386 kg CO₂ / kWh converts energy to emissions.
The estimate is conservative: it models 8 AI queries per person per day against Northeastern's 24,000-person community — excluding server-side training, cooling overhead, and embodied hardware emissions.
= 222.34 kg / day