The Spring Festival is approaching, have you prepared a long to-see list, ready to stay at home and be a "sofa potato" during the holiday?
However, last year's popular Korean drama "Squid Game" not only sparked a viewership boom, but also caused a surge in Internet traffic, causing disgruntled telecom operators to sue Netflix for not paying extra traffic and maintenance costs, making the video streaming service the energy behind Disputes over consumption and carbon emissions have reignited discussions.
Data transmission and data center each account for 1% of global electricity consumption
In the past two years, the outbreak of the epidemic has greatly benefited the home economy and online services. However, do you know how many kilowatts of electricity and how much carbon it will emit when watching Netflix? This article refers to the analysis of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the well-known climate media Carbon Brief, and takes you to check it out.
Streaming services will be associated with carbon emissions, because many devices, network infrastructure and remote data centers must be constantly running to make the videos you click play, and the process consumes a lot of electricity. At the end of last year, the IEA released data indicating that in 2020, due to the massive use of video streaming, online games and social media in various places, the global Internet traffic surged by more than 40% in that year!
Fortunately, the efficiency of data transmission and data center operations has improved significantly over the years, keeping the associated energy consumption under control. If cryptocurrency mining is not included, the power consumption of the above two power-eating monsters (about 250 TW) each accounts for about 1% of the global terminal power demand.
However, the IEA also warned that various network application services will continue to grow in the future. On the one hand, technologies such as 5G, blockchain, machine learning, and deep computing are gradually maturing. On the other hand, entertainment such as audio-visual media, online games, and even the Metaverse products will only become more popular. Just this year, the various streaming services mentioned above will account for nearly 90% of consumer Internet traffic.
To answer your questions, what is the environmental cost of catching a show on Netflix for an
Netflix chases a show for an hour, and its carbon footprint is similar to that of taking a high-speed rail
The above results are quite different from the previous reports. Media including Yahoo, New York Post, Deutsche Welle and other media have quoted the research of the French think tank Shift Project, which believes that watching half an hour of Netflix (about one episode of unit drama) will produce Up to 1.6 kg (1600 g) of carbon emissions.
This gap is due to the above studies overestimating Netflix's bit transfer rate (bit/s, the amount of data transmitted or processed per unit time), the data transfer and data center energy intensity used by Shift Project ), which is 35 to 50 times higher than the IEA! The resulting data transmission volume and related power consumption will naturally rise with the tide. Later, the Shift Project issued a correction in June 2020 and revised down Netflix's carbon footprint to 200 grams per hour, which is still much higher than the IEA's calculation.
It is worth mentioning that the playback vehicle also has an impact on the carbon footprint of streaming video. For example, watching Netflix on a 50-inch LED TV consumes 5 times and 100 times more power than using a laptop and a smartphone, respectively! It shows that compared with other 3C devices, mobile phones are more efficient in data transmission and consume less power. However, is it too bad for your eyesight to use a small screen to chase dramas for a long time? It's another story.
It is undeniable that under the blow of the digital trend, online drama watching has become an indispensable daily entertainment for many people, which stimulates the continuous increase of related energy consumption and emissions. The IEA finally reminds that in addition to continuously improving energy efficiency, if the carbon footprint of streaming video and audio is to be reduced, the decarbonization of the overall power structure is the kingly way.
The full text is reproduced from the low-carbon life blog , the original title: 36 grams or 1.6 kilograms? International climate think tank analyzes Netflix's carbon footprint of chasing dramas hour? The answer calculated by IEA based on 2019 data is: 0.077 kWh of electricity and 36 grams of carbon dioxide! Such a carbon footprint is not far from taking high-speed rail (32 to 38 grams of carbon per person per kilometer).
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