Intelligence has
a footprint.
Understanding it
is only the beginning.
Candor Intelligence investigates the intersection of AI infrastructure, electricity consumption, environmental transparency, and evidence-based decision-making.
Look
beneath.
AI's environmental impact extends beyond the electricity consumed by a single prompt.
Investigating infrastructure, energy consumption, electricity grids, and the limitations of current environmental reporting.
We cannot improve
what we do not
adequately understand.
Artificial intelligence is transforming how we work, build, and innovate. Understanding its environmental consequences and determining how to reduce them remain evolving scientific and technical challenges.
It involves computational efficiency, infrastructure utilization, electricity generation, geographic location, and the decisions that determine how AI systems actually operate.
Yet critical information remains difficult to access, measure, or independently verify.
The challenge isn't simply measuring AI's footprint. It's understanding which decisions can meaningfully change it.
From transparency
to action.
Explore our research Understand
What is AI's environmental impact? Investigating infrastructure, energy consumption, electricity grids, and the limitations of current environmental reporting.
Evaluate
What can actually reduce it? Examining computational efficiency, model selection, inference optimization, and electricity-related interventions.
Inform
How can evidence shape better decisions? Exploring how environmental research can inform technical practices, organizational accountability, and policy development.
Research grounded
in real infrastructure.
Our investigation began with a fundamental question: can we connect the infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence to the electricity systems supplying it?
The Candor Infrastructure Tracker brings together publicly available facility information and electricity-grid data to explore what can be measured and where important uncertainties remain. It's one research instrument we've built along the way, not the whole of what we're investigating.
Explore the Infrastructure TrackerTransparency
is necessary.
It isn't the whole answer.
Knowing how much electricity an AI system consumes is valuable. Knowing how to reduce that consumption, and whether doing so actually reduces emissions, is a different challenge.
Candor's research is evolving beyond environmental accounting toward investigating the relationship between measurement, intervention, and meaningful environmental outcomes. Our ambition is to contribute evidence that makes better decisions possible.
Read our research journeyBetter intelligence. Less impact.