arXiv:2604.00053cs.SEcs.AI2026-04被引 2

对比了气候领域大模型的能耗,发现复杂设计反而更耗电。

The Energy Footprint of LLM-Based Environmental Analysis: LLMs and Domain Products

论文配图:The Energy Footprint of LLM-Based Environmental Analysis: LLMs and Domain Products
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 拆解检索、生成、幻觉检测三环节量化能耗
  • 复杂代理流程使推理能耗显著上升,但效果提升有限
  • 适合关注模型能效与环保的开发者和研究者

随着大语言模型(LLMs)在气候变化与环境研究等专业领域应用增多,其能源消耗问题日益突出。本研究评估了两个基于LLM的气候分析聊天机器人(ChatNetZero 和 ChatNDC)与通用 GPT-4o-mini 模型在实际用户查询下的推理阶段能耗。通过将工作流分解为检索、生成和幻觉检查三个组件,并测试不同时段与地理位置的影响,发现领域专用RAG系统的能耗高度依赖其设计:更具代理性的流程会显著增加能耗,尤其是在进行额外准确性和验证检查时,但响应质量并未相应提升。尽管需进一步在更多模型、环境和提示结构中验证,本研究揭示了领域专用LLM产品设计对能耗与输出质量的双重影响。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in domain-specific applications, including climate change and environmental research, understanding their energy footprint has become an important concern. The growing adoption of retrieval-augmented (RAG) systems for climate-domain specific analysis raises a key question: how does the energy consumption of domain-specific RAG workflows compare with that of direct generic LLM usage? Prior research has focused on standalone model calls or coarse token-based estimates, while leaving the energy implications of deployed application workflows insufficiently understood. In this paper, we assess the inference-time energy consumption of two LLM-based climate analysis chatbots (ChatNetZero and ChatNDC) compared to the generic GPT-4o-mini model. We estimate energy use under actual user queries by decomposing each workflow into retrieval, generation, and hallucination-checking components. We also test across different times of day and geographic access locations. Our results show that the energy consumption of domain-specific RAG systems depends strongly on their design. More agentic pipelines substantially increase inference-time energy use, particularly when used for additional accuracy or verification checks, although they may not yield proportional gains in response quality. While more research is needed to further test these initial findings more robustly across models, environments and prompting structures, this study provides a new understanding on how the design of domain-specific LLM products affects both the energy footprint and quality of output.

大模型能效气候分析RAG系统

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