H
Hannah Ritchie
hannahritchie.substack.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2022
Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data writes data-driven posts on energy, climate, electric vehicles, and the environmental footprint of AI.
What HN saysCommenters cite it as solid data, such as AI energy use per query and EV versus petrol car emissions. One calls her work fantastic.
20HN people shared it
9linked it in comments
15stories submitted
23story points
3 months agolast shared
2022people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1How long does it take to build a nuclear reactor?4 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 2EV batteries would have cost as much as a million dollars in the 1990s2 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 3Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?2 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 4Electric cars are better for the climate than petrol or diesel2 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 5Ai footprint august 20252 people · first shared 2026
- 6Is Europe having a bad wildfire year?1 people · 3 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 7Are meat substitutes better for the environment than meat?1 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · 2 comments on HN
- 8How much electricity does AI consume?1 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 9Bees are more than just honeybees1 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 10Do more Europeans die of summer heat than Americans die of guns?1 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 11We could produce a lot of electricity on the land used for biofuels1 people · 1 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 12Most people are individually optimistic, but think the world is falling apart1 people · 1 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 13China is adding solar and wind faster than many of us realise: three charts1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 14Average range of electric cars has more than tripled since 20111 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 15Heat cold deaths1 people · first shared 2026
What HN people wrote when they linked it
philipkglass · 2026-03-04
The author Hannah Ritchie works on Our World In Data and also publishes the fantastic Sustainability by Numbers substack. It's in the same vein as the late, great David MacKay's Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air.
This tool has its own recent substack post. See the comments too, especially the one by Chris Preist that contextualizes the energy usage of streaming video (a topic that has also been discussed on HN before).
https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/does-that-use-a-lot-of
therealdrag0 · 2026-07-16
Here’s some real data.
https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/heat-cold-deaths
jampekka · 2026-03-27
LLM inference uses on the order of 1 Wh per query. That's under 10 meters of driving on an EV or running air conditioning for under 5 seconds.
https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ai-footprint-august-2025
ZeroGravitas · 2026-03-10
https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ev-fossil-cars-climate
This even compares cars built in an unrealistic 100% coal grid, and fuelled on 100% coal grid. Driving 14k miles a year for 10 years a Tesla Model 3 built under those extreme conditions beats a gas Fiat 500
MichaelDickens · 2026-03-04
OP says one query uses 0.3 Wh. Driving an electric car for 10 miles = 3,000 Wh which is roughly 10,000 Wh per hour.
I'm not sure how many queries is equivalent to an hour of Claude code use, but maybe 5 seconds, which means an hour of continuous use = 216 Wh, or ~50x less than an electric car.
OP has a longer article about LLM energy usage: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ai-footprint-august-2025
JumpCrisscross · 2023-04-10
> the reactor in Belarus was built in 8 years
That’s slower than average [1]. Striking, considering how much where you build influences timelines as much as who’s building. (I doubt Minsk subjects Rosatom to community input, labor requirements or environmental reviews.)
[1] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-time
erentz · 2023-04-09
> The difference is that a lithium battery facility can be installed and functional in 12-24 months.
These things aren't comparable without putting it together as a system.
> A nuclear plant takes 12-24 years.
You're thinking about wild outliers there. It's around 6.5 years median [1].
[1] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-time
tuatoru · 2023-04-04
Nuclear reactors typically take about 100 months to build--and that's just the construction phase, not the pre-construction design and permitting--so no, they won't help in the next 5 - 10 years.
1. https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-time
natmaka · 2023-03-20
> Nuclear plants probably kill less wildlife and people per delivered kWh than lithium extraction
Uranium extraction has not negligible effects. Recent case: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20230124-french-uranium-miner-leaves-20-m…
> Even as we ramp lithium production as fast as we can, we’re facing production shortages
Maybe, however the big picture seems clear: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicles
> We should pick the top 5-10 technologies
Globally we did so during the last 20 years, as many nations (including the US) tried hard to build and then use nuclear reactors and also renewable sources of energy:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electricity?coun…