mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

A Survey of Sustainability in Large Language Models: Applications, Economics, and Challenges

arXiv 2412.04782 ↗First posted 6 Dec 2024cs.AI cs.CEcited by 18

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Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have transformed numerous domains by providing advanced capabilities in natural language understanding, generation, and reasoning. Despite their groundbreaking applications across industries such as research, healthcare, and creative media, their rapid adoption raises critical concerns regarding sustainability. This survey paper comprehensively examines the environmental, economic, and computational challenges associated with LLMs, focusing on energy consumption, carbon emissions, and resource utilization in data centers. By synthesizing insights from existing literature, this work explores strategies such as resource-efficient training, sustainable deployment practices, and lifecycle assessments to mitigate the environmental impacts of LLMs. Key areas of emphasis include energy optimization, renewable energy integration, and balancing performance with sustainability. The findings aim to guide researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in developing actionable strategies for sustainable AI systems, fostering a responsible and environmentally conscious future for artificial intelligence.

Key facts. Cited by 18 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 47 of its 63 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Dec 2024.

Builds on

47 of 63 references.

References · 47

  1. 2022PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathwayscited by 5,304
  2. 2023AudioLDM: Text-to-Audio Generation with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 592
  3. 2021Zero-Shot Text-Guided Object Generation with Dream Fieldscited by 513
  4. 2023Make-An-Audio: Text-To-Audio Generation with Prompt-Enhanced Diffusion Modelscited by 323
  5. 2022Estimating the Carbon Footprint of BLOOM, a 176B Parameter Language Modelcited by 264
  6. 2023Text-to-image Diffusion Models in Generative AI: A Surveycited by 264
  7. 2023DreamBooth3D: Subject-Driven Text-to-3D Generationcited by 235
  8. 2023A Survey on Video Diffusion Modelscited by 203
  9. 2023Conditional Image-to-Video Generation with Latent Flow Diffusion Modelscited by 180
  10. 2024PhysGen: Rigid-Body Physics-Grounded Image-to-Video Generationcited by 169
  11. 2023From Words to Watts: Benchmarking the Energy Costs of Large Language Model Inferencecited by 168
  12. 2024CamCo: Camera-Controllable 3D-Consistent Image-to-Video Generationcited by 163
35 more
  1. 2023Text-to-Audio Generation using Instruction-Tuned LLM and Latent Diffusion Modelcited by 145
  2. 2022Measuring the Carbon Intensity of AI in Cloud Instancescited by 110
  3. 2023Evaluating Open-Domain Question Answering in the Era of Large Language Modelscited by 110
  4. 2024RealmDreamer: Text-Driven 3D Scene Generation with Inpainting and Depth Diffusioncited by 109
  5. 2024Tango 2: Aligning Diffusion-based Text-to-Audio Generations through Direct Preference Optimizationcited by 97
  6. 2023Make-An-Audio 2: Temporal-Enhanced Text-to-Audio Generationcited by 90
  7. 2023On Learning to Summarize with Large Language Models as Referencescited by 80
  8. 2023LLMCarbon: Modeling the end-to-end Carbon Footprint of Large Language Modelscited by 71
  9. 2023I2V-Adapter: A General Image-to-Video Adapter for Diffusion Modelscited by 70
  10. 2024Survey of Bias In Text-to-Image Generation: Definition, Evaluation, and Mitigationcited by 66
  11. 2023PolyLM: An Open Source Polyglot Large Language Modelcited by 64
  12. 2023IT3D: Improved Text-to-3D Generation with Explicit View Synthesiscited by 63
  13. 2024Sora as a World Model? A Complete Survey on Text-to-Video Generationcited by 53
  14. 2024A Systematic Survey of Text Summarization: From Statistical Methods to Large Language Modelscited by 52
  15. 2023Making AI Less "Thirsty": Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Modelscited by 44
  16. 2023Text Summarization Using Large Language Models: A Comparative Study of MPT-7b-instruct, Falcon-7b-instruct, and OpenAI Chat-GPT Modelscited by 35
  17. 2024EzAudio: Enhancing Text-to-Audio Generation with Efficient Diffusion Transformercited by 30
  18. 2024From Sora What We Can See: A Survey of Text-to-Video Generationcited by 26
  19. 2023Text-to-3D Generation with Bidirectional Diffusion using both 2D and 3D priorscited by 24
  20. 2023Retrieval-Augmented Text-to-Audio Generationcited by 23
  21. 2024GenTranslate: Large Language Models are Generative Multilingual Speech and Machine Translatorscited by 22
  22. 2024AudioLCM: Text-to-Audio Generation with Latent Consistency Modelscited by 21
  23. 2023CLIPSonic: Text-to-Audio Synthesis with Unlabeled Videos and Pretrained Language-Vision Modelscited by 20
  24. 2021PQK: Model Compression via Pruning, Quantization, and Knowledge Distillationcited by 19
  25. 2024LLMCO2: Advancing Accurate Carbon Footprint Prediction for LLM Inferencescited by 19
  26. 2024BATON: Aligning Text-to-Audio Model with Human Preference Feedbackcited by 18
  27. 2023A Survey of AI Text-to-Image and AI Text-to-Video Generatorscited by 17
  28. 2024Text-to-3D Shape Generationcited by 13
  29. 2023mLongT5: A Multilingual and Efficient Text-To-Text Transformer for Longer Sequencescited by 10
  30. 2024Harnessing Multi-Role Capabilities of Large Language Models for Open-Domain Question Answeringcited by 8
  31. 2024Neuromorphic hardware for sustainable AI data centerscited by 6
  32. 2021Edge AI without Compromise: Efficient, Versatile and Accurate Neurocomputing in Resistive Random-Access Memorycited by 3
  33. 2023AutoPCF: Efficient Product Carbon Footprint Accounting with Large Language Modelscited by 2
  34. 2024LOLA -- An Open-Source Massively Multilingual Large Language Modelcited by 2
  35. 2024Double Jeopardy and Climate Impact in the Use of Large Language Models: Socio-economic Disparities and Reduced Utility for Non-English Speakerscited by 1

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 11; 2026: 7.

18 papers.

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  1. 2025Causal LLM Routing: End-to-End Regret Minimization from Observational Datacited by 27
  2. 2025ESGenius: Benchmarking LLMs on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and Sustainability Knowledgecited by 8
  3. 2025Leveraging the true depth of LLMscited by 6
  4. 2025Sustainability via LLM Right-sizingcited by 3
  5. 2025SLM-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark of Small Language Models on Environmental Impacts--Extended Versioncited by 3
  6. 2025Green MLOps to Green GenOps: An Empirical Study of Energy Consumption in Discriminative and Generative AI Operationscited by 2
  7. 2025Bi-directional Model Cascading with Proxy Confidencecited by 2
  8. 2025Learnable quantum spectral filters for hybrid graph neural networkscited by 1
  9. 2026An Expert Schema for Evaluating Large Language Model Errors in Scholarly Question-Answering Systemscited by 1
  10. 2025Projected Compression: Trainable Projection for Efficient Transformer Compressioncited by 0
  11. 2025ReservoirChat: Interactive Documentation Enhanced with LLM and Knowledge Graph for ReservoirPycited by 0
  12. 2025A robust methodology for long-term sustainability evaluation of Machine Learning modelscited by 0
6 more
  1. 2026Convex Optimization for Alignment and Preference Learning on a Single GPUcited by 0
  2. 2026LLM-Guided Evolution for Medical Decision Pipelinescited by 0
  3. 2026Enabling Cloud-Level Accuracy in Edge AI through IoT Data Preprocessingcited by 0
  4. 2026Engineering Reliable Autonomous Systems: Challenges and Solutionscited by 0
  5. 2026Samsone: A Family of Open Small Audio Language Models for On-Device Inferencecited by 0
  6. 2026A Statistical Perspective on Knowledge Distillation: Foundations, Classical Methods, and Large Language Model Extensionscited by 0