You don't know the direct impact of this project on data center usage because you haven't observed the development process. And you don't know whether it infringes on copyright because you haven't read the code.

The existing local models already exist, and new releases will happen because the companies want to sell you inference. They receive no profit or incentive to release the models as open weights but they do it anyway - There is no coherent ethical delimma against using them locally, as it has no effect on whether the companies will or will not be encouraged to do more training.

That's a fair point. Where I am is about 28% fossil fuels I believe, so it's a slightly different calculation.

No, and I do understand that training is the most energy-intensive part of the process. I don't know how exactly it divides up: how much of the work of massive data centres is training and how much is running people's queries on finished models.