With 10% of battery I can code for 3 hours. If I compare the result of this activity with the 10% of battery wasted on a single question whose answer probably won't be completely correct, I consider the latter to be excessive, in relative terms, even if I take into account my time cost. Theoretically, if I would need to ask 100 questions to complete one task, I would need to recharge my computer 10 times. This is why I offload the burden of energy usage to a third party such as OpenAI.
BTW I don't drive if I don't have to either, which might make me more sensitive than you to this, comparatively low, energy usage diff.
And that from the system that is using like 10% of the energy then OpenAI. So for OpenAI every useless request is like pushing 1000KG for 1KM.
For a prompt to make the cut, I usually judge whether the task (or the documentation) is boring enough, time-consuming enough, yet precise enough for an llm to give me the solution. If something requires more than three-five prompts then I need to work on it myself and come back with smaller and more precise questions.
IMO, if the green energy industry wants to penetrate an important domain of modern life fast, the serving of open source models seems like a really low hanging fruit.