Assuming that companies aren't just pissing away money on electricity, hardware, cooling etc. for the sake of it, this is essentially just going to be a marker

Assuming that companies aren't just pissing away money on electricity, hardware, cooling etc. for the sake of it, this is essentially just going to be a marker of quality. Larger images, higher video bitrates, hell, maybe an AI model with more parameters. Bam, more carbon. This is generalisable to many contexts. If I'm buying a prepared meal for example, the one with a higher carbon footprint is likely to have more meat content. If your goal is to reduce emissions, you likely want to hide this detail from people.