This seems a big waste of energy if that 140Wh (504,000 joules) number is correct. That amount of energy is about 2,000 times what it would take to do a very similar thing on a home PC.
Writing a 100 word email with a 7B model would take my PC about 5 seconds, times an increased power use of 50 watts, so 250 joules.
I get that they might be using a much larger model, but the e-mail is not going to be 2,000 times better.
A while back there was some issue with the Lemmy code and people kept being served posts that were over 6 months old. Peple started replying and the original posters were often "wow, you found my post!" It was kind of awesome.
Yes and on a global scale we massively overproduce a great many things in the first place. If we could calm the fuck down, we could all work a bit less.
If you want to save money, start looking at the largest salaries.