I agree, the paper (not sure it is peer reviewed) that the linked article refers to implies that watching a movie costs $1.54 in energy in 2012. God knows what this would do to the business model of Google and Facebook et al with their streaming video ads and 1bn impression content. If this were true, surely there must be a huge amount of quantitive easing in the energy market to invent the money for this as otherwise no internet company would be viable.
I think that the potentially dodgy math shouldn't diminish the point that efficiency in data transmission is an important topic in reducing carbon emissions and we should seek to do this. I would argue that it is more likely that we are being efficient using the Internet to watch movies compared to the process of making physical things out of plastic as a delivery device, that notwithstanding transmitting unnecessary data must have an impact on some scale.
Accessibility First DevRel. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
As I said the amount in a Country with modern architecture the actually amount is somewhere around 45g of CO2 per GB so far less impact than I made it appear!
It would be super interesting that if we ignored plastic waste whether a blue ray was better for the environment than streaming in 4K in terms of CO2, what a great idea for an article!
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I agree, the paper (not sure it is peer reviewed) that the linked article refers to implies that watching a movie costs $1.54 in energy in 2012. God knows what this would do to the business model of Google and Facebook et al with their streaming video ads and 1bn impression content. If this were true, surely there must be a huge amount of quantitive easing in the energy market to invent the money for this as otherwise no internet company would be viable.
I think that the potentially dodgy math shouldn't diminish the point that efficiency in data transmission is an important topic in reducing carbon emissions and we should seek to do this. I would argue that it is more likely that we are being efficient using the Internet to watch movies compared to the process of making physical things out of plastic as a delivery device, that notwithstanding transmitting unnecessary data must have an impact on some scale.
As always a nice and balanced response!
As I said the amount in a Country with modern architecture the actually amount is somewhere around 45g of CO2 per GB so far less impact than I made it appear!
It would be super interesting that if we ignored plastic waste whether a blue ray was better for the environment than streaming in 4K in terms of CO2, what a great idea for an article!