Bingeing Netflix? Here's why streaming comes at a cost to environment

Data-intensive video streaming, gaming and livestreaming for business, university and school classes, is chewing up energy

Coronavirus lockdowns have led to a massive reduction in global emissions, but there’s one area where energy usage is up – way up – during the pandemic: internet traffic.

Data-intensive video streaming, gaming and livestreaming for business, university and school classes, is chewing up energy.

Estimates can be notoriously difficult and depend on the electricity source, but six hours of streaming video may be the equivalent of burning one litre of petrol, due to emissions from the electricity used to power the data centres which deliver the video.

In fact, the energy associated with the global IT sector – from powering internet servers to charging smartphones – is estimated to have the same carbon footprint as the aviation industry’s fuel emissions (before planes were grounded).

But Australia is a global leader in research to lower the energy used in IT, which is vital for meeting the streaming demand without the environmental cost.

Where does the data come from?

Video requires huge amounts of data, and accounts for around 80% of the data transmitted on the internet. Much of the energy needed for streaming services is consumed by data centres, which deliver data to your computer or device. Increasingly housed in vast factory-sized buildings, these servers store, process and distribute internet traffic.

Research in 2015 found data centres may consume as much as 13% of the world’s electricity by 2030, accounting for about 6% of global carbon dioxide emissions. And the European Commission-funded Eureca project found data centres in EU countries consumed 25% more energy in 2017 compared with 2014.