Streaming has a dirty secret. The carbon footprint produced by fans watching a month of Netflix’s top ten global TV hits is equivalent to driving a car to Saturn and beyond.
The world’s largest video-sharing site, YouTube, emits more carbon dioxide per year than the equivalent greenhouse gas output of Glasgow, the Scottish city where world leaders met for the COP26 climate summit last year.
While campaigners focus on the sectors that emit the most CO2 — such as air travel, the car industry and food production — the increased popularity of services such as Disney+ and Netflix is making people think about how bad streaming is for the planet.
Power supply
Every activity in the chain required to stream video needs electricity — most of which is generated by emitting greenhouse gases. This chain includes the use of huge data centres, Wi-Fi transmission, broadband connection and watching the content on a device.
“Environmental impact is a very young story in the streaming industry,” says Dom Robinson, the founder of Greening of Streaming, an organization that focuses on the sector’s energy impact. “People talk about the bottlenecks in internet traffic caused by the growing demand for streaming and gaming services, but there is plenty of capacity. It is actually about the growing demand for power supply.”
Netflix says one hour of streaming by one user on its platform produces “well under” 100 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) — a unit of measure that indicates carbon footprint. More specifically, The Carbon Trust says the European average is 55 to 56 grams of CO2e for every hour of streaming video. That is equivalent to driving about 300 metres in a car.
Insights
Last year, Netflix gave some insight into its most popular global hits by total hours viewed, a piece of data it plans to publish more frequently. The top ten shows, including Squid Game, Stranger Things, Money Heist and Bridgerton, caused the most interest and therefore the highest emissions. Netflix reported that fans had spent more than six billion hours in total watching the top ten shows in the first 28 days after each show was released. This is the same as about 1.8 billion kilometres of travel in a car based on The Carbon Trust estimate — about the same as the current distance between earth and Saturn.
As for YouTube, a report by researchers at Bristol University, based on estimates of the streaming site’s usage in 2016, calculated that watching videos on the site produced CO2e of more than 11 million tonnes a year, similar to a city the size of Glasgow or Frankfurt. Considering that YouTube had 1.4 billion users that year and now has more than 2.4 billion users globally, the company’s carbon footprint will be significantly bigger today.
Last year, Netflix announced its aim to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2022. The move follows similar climate-friendly goals announced in recent years by the large tech companies, such as Microsoft, Apple and Facebook. In the UK, companies including BT, the BBC and Sky have promised to hit net zero by 2030.
Robinson says such strategies must involve major reductions in emissions rather than just investing in green projects if they are to achieve carbon neutrality.
“Net zero has become a way to say: ‘This is not my problem.’ There has to be a reduction engineered within businesses, not just an accounting trick, to make a difference,” he says.
“We have created Greening of Streaming because we know there is sufficient appetite within the streaming sector to make positive changes to reduce this environmental impact, and because the technology is there to make it achievable.”
Data calculation
One difficult question is whether or not the emissions produced by consumers watching shows should be considered. Netflix’s net-zero plan is based only on the carbon footprint of its corporate operations and the making of films and TV shows.
In a blog explaining how it estimates emissions, Netflix said internet service providers and the manufacturers of devices such as TVs, iPads and mobile phones should “ideally account for those emissions themselves”.
“The calculation of carbon footprint should include user devices, as that is where the digital services are being consumed,” says Daniel Schien, senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Bristol. “Exclusion of that part of the footprint will undermine the ability to manage and reduce it.”
The growth in internet traffic has been enormous in the last few years. As much as 80 per cent of the data capacity is taken up by the popularity of the bandwidth-heavy services of a few companies — such as Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, Activision Blizzard, which makes Call of Duty, and Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite.
However, Schien warns that the average of 50 per cent growth in demand for capacity per year does not directly correspond to the same rate of increase in carbon emissions. He mentions factors such as the more than 20 per cent annual improvement in efficiency in networks and data centres that offset some of the increase.
“The majority of the carbon-per-hour that video streaming produces is in the home,” he says. “The big footprint is TVs, which are getting bigger. Those TV emissions take place whether you are watching a regular broadcast or streaming, and broadcast TV is still far more popular than streaming.”
The UK media regulator Ofcom estimated that total video consumption in 2020 increased from four hours and 50 minutes per day to five hours and 40 minutes per day, as many were stuck at home because of the pandemic. This remains a small proportion of overall emissions-heavy screen time, however.
Schien also points out that, when it comes to contributions to overall UK greenhouse gas emissions, the streaming and TV industry remains a small contributor. Microwaving a bag of popcorn for four minutes produces about 30 per cent of the emissions of watching an hour of streamed content.
“Every little bit helps, but the carbon intensity of streaming as a proportion of the economy is very small,” he says. “Heating, mobility and food are the things we think most about.
“I’m not saying we don’t need to care about it, but something as innocent as muesli with milk has a higher carbon footprint than one hour of streaming.”
© Guardian News & Media 2022