💡 Warp News #323
💶 Solar power has saved Europe more than €100 million per day. 👩💻 Open source helps reach millions of unvaccinated children. ⚰️ Deaths from indoor air pollution have fallen by 1.5 million.
Share this story!
Free newsletter with fact-based optimistic news about technology, science, and human progress with the angry optimist, Mathias Sundin. If you are not a subscriber, become one here.
👍 One prompt = one second in the microwave
Myths are spreading about AI and energy. The claim that AI is energy-intensive has gained widespread traction.
I have previously described, both here and in my book, how wrong this is.
Now more facts have emerged that confirm exactly that — AI is not energy-intensive.
In Hannah Ritchie's overview, I found a useful rule of thumb for describing how much energy AI uses.
Because a fundamental problem is that we don't know how much energy we use on almost anything, and therefore we have no way of judging what is a lot or a little.
The rule of thumb is this:
One prompt = one second in the microwave
Heating something in a 1000-watt microwave for one second uses just as much (or as little) electricity as a simple question or instruction to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or any of the other AI models.
If you heat food for two minutes in the microwave, that corresponds to 120 prompts, which in turn corresponds to hours of AI chatting.
Mathias Sundin
The Angry Optimist
💡 Fact-based optimistic news of the week
💶 Solar power has saved Europe more than €100 million per day since March
Solar energy has saved Europe more than €100 million per day since 1 March, totaling more than €3 billion. Wind and solar power have reduced electricity prices by an average of 24% between 2023 and 2025. If gas prices remain high, total savings in 2026 could reach €67.5 billion.
👩💻 Open source helps reach millions of unvaccinated children
Many countries have long collected vaccination data on paper or in Excel, causing delays and gaps. Now the University of Oslo and Gavi have built digital systems in 40 low- and middle-income countries. The result: hundreds of thousands of children vaccinated – in Mozambique and Kenya alone.
🔋 Sodium-ion batteries ready for mass market - cheaper and more durable than lithium-ion batteries
Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper and more durable than lithium-ion batteries, but have not been possible to manufacture at scale until now. CATL says the manufacturing challenges are solved. The cells handle more than 15,000 cycles, and sodium is 1,000 times more abundant than lithium.
⚰️ Deaths from indoor air pollution have fallen by 1.5 million since 1990
The annual number of premature deaths from indoor air pollution has dropped from around 4.5 million to just under 3 million per year. The decline is driven by more people gaining access to cleaner cooking fuels. Asia accounts for the largest reduction, with deaths cut roughly in half.
⚡ Finland has cut power sector emissions by 80 percent in a decade
Finland's emissions from electricity generation fell from nearly 15 million tonnes to around 3 million tonnes per year between 2016 and 2025. Nuclear and wind power together account for 64.5 percent of generation. The last coal plant was shut down in April 2025.
🤰 Teenage pregnancy rates have fallen sharply across the world
Globally, the number of births among teenage girls has fallen by over one-third since 2000. In Central and South Asia, the figure has dropped by over three-quarters during the same period. The decline is seen across all regions of the world, according to data from the UN.
👍 New rule of thumb for AI energy use: One prompt = one second in the microwave
A simple AI query uses about 0.3 watt-hours of electricity. A microwave at around 1,000 watts uses about 0.28 watt-hours per second. So a simple AI query corresponds to roughly one second in the microwave.
✉️ Get a dose of fact-based, free, optimism once a week
Every week, we send out a free newsletter with fact-based, optimistic news about technology, science, and human progress.
If you're not a subscriber yet, you are welcome to become one!
If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend and ask them to subscribe. It's free and arrives once a week.
🎤 Talk on AI
Let me help your organization level up on AI.
Read more at mathiassundin.org.
By becoming a premium supporter, you help in the creation and sharing of fact-based optimistic news all over the world.