Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability Innovation & Technology

New AI Energy Score Helps Users Rein in Its Negative Impacts

The new scoring system establishes a clear benchmark for the energy efficiency of AI models. The initiative rates 166 commonly used AI models to help developers and AI users identify those that use less energy and incentivize sustainable AI development.

Published 1 month ago | About a 4 minute read

Image: Salesforce

Today, Salesforce — in collaboration with Hugging Face, Cohere and Carnegie Mellon University — launched the AI Energy Score, a first-of-its-kind benchmarking tool that enables AI developers and users to evaluate, identify, and compare the energy consumption of AI models.

Salesforce also becomes the first AI model developer to disclose the energy-efficiency data of its proprietary models under the new framework.

“Reducing AI energy consumption lowers operational costs, optimizes infrastructure, and enhances long-term sustainability and profitability,” says Suzanne DiBianca, EVP and Chief Impact Officer at Salesforce. “We are proud to work with industry leaders to build a more transparent AI ecosystem.”

In a recent Capgemini Research Institute study, almost half of execs admit their use of generative AI has fueled their company’s GHG emissions; 42 percent have had to re-examine their climate goals because of the technology’s resource consumption; and nearly three-quarters find it challenging to measure the technology’s footprint due to limited data/transparency from providers and the industry lacks a methodology around how to account for its environmental footprint.

As Niklas Sundberg, Chief Digital Officer and SVP at global transport and logistics company Kuehne+Nagel, has pointed out: “You should be able to ask Copilot or ChatGPT what the carbon footprint of your last query is, but none of the tools will give you a response to that question at the moment.”

Now, the AI Energy Score aims to address this lack of transparency. Similar to how ENERGY STAR transformed energy-efficiency standards for appliances and electronics, this initiative establishes a clear, trusted benchmark for AI model sustainability.

“The AI Energy Score represents a major milestone for sustainable AI. By creating a transparent rating system, we address a key blocker for reducing the environmental impact of AI,” Dr. Sasha Luccioni, AI & Climate Lead at French-American machine learning company Hugging Face. “We’re thrilled to launch this project and look forward to seeing wider adoption.”

The AI Energy Score will debut at this week’s AI Action Summit. By enhancing transparency, the score can drive market preference for efficient models and incentivize sustainable AI development. Recognized by the French Government and the Paris Peace Forum for its transformative potential, the AI Energy Score features:

Standardized energy ratings: A standardized framework for measuring and comparing AI model energy efficiency.
Public leaderboard: A comprehensive leaderboard that features scores for 10 common AI tasks — including text generation, image generation and summarization — performed by 166 models, including Salesforce’s SFR-Embedding, xLAM, and SF-TextBase.
Benchmarking portal: A platform where AI developers can submit their open or proprietary AI models to be evaluated and added to the leaderboard. Open models can be automatically tested, while closed models can be evaluated through a secured testing sandbox.
Recognizable energy use label: A 1- to 5-star label that rates AI model energy use, with five stars indicating the highest efficiency. This helps developers and users easily identify and choose more sustainable models. Once rated, AI developers can generate standardized labels to share their models’ energy score, with built-in guidance on the proper label display for visibility and impact.

“The AI Energy Score exemplifies the missions of the AI Action Summit by tackling a pressing societal issue — AI transparency and sustainability — through bold innovation and global collaboration,” says Bruno Bonnell, France’s General Secretary for Investment. “We are proud to showcase this groundbreaking initiative at the Summit, as it stands as a powerful testament to the ingenuity of the global academic and industry ecosystem and a rallying call for collective action towards responsible AI development.”