The Environmental Impact of Netflix and Zoom
Turn off your webcam and stream in standard definition.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic effect on our environment.
The positive effects have been well reported. Reduced industrial activity has decreased the emission of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants. Meanwhile, travel restrictions have resulted in fewer tourists and dramatic ecological restorations.
Pink dolphins in Hong Kong, flamingos in Mumbai, and thriving marine life in Hawaii provided some much needed levity to otherwise bleak news reports.
Unfortunately, it’s not all clean rivers and exotic animals. While emissions from transport and industry have fallen, medical and municipal waste has risen.
As always, we must be cognisant of our changing relationship with the environment.
One change many of us will relate to is internet usage. The global pandemic has increased internet usage by as much as 40% due to stay-at-home orders. Streaming technologies in particular have seen an astronomic rise in usage.
Back in April, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) saw a boom of over 15 million new sign-ups, boosting its stalling stock price. Understandable, as stay-at-home orders left millions of people with a lot of time on their hands.
The use of streaming technology has also seen huge growth in the form of teleconferencing.
This growth can also be evidenced by the markets. The pandemic catapulted Zoom’s rapid growth into something meteoric. In January 2020, Zoom (NASDAQ: ZM) was trading at around $65 per share. It ended the year at around $420 per share, growing 700%. These numbers are only overshadowed by Zoom’s growth in users. By the end of 2020, Zoom reported some 300 million participants per day, up 3000% from January.
The pandemic has brought substantial growth to an already booming technology. There is much to be cheerful about.
Teleconferencing is driving the shift towards flexible working. This is good news for carers and young families, particularly women who constitute the majority of caregivers. Streaming video has also democratized education offering formal and informal opportunities through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and educational channels on platforms such as YouTube. Streaming has introduced an unprecedented economy of scale that enables talented creators with limited resources to reach a global audience.
We should be aware, however, that technological gains rarely come without a cost. In the case of streaming technology, that cost is environmental.
The surge in internet usage has increased global energy demand by 42.6 million megawatts. That equates to 3.2 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, 1.8 trillion litres of water and 100 million metres squared of land per year.
Streaming technology in particular is having a large effect on our environmental footprints. An hour of videoconferencing emits as much as 1 kg of CO2. That’s roughly the equivalent of driving 5 miles. What’s more, the same conference call could consume as much as 12 litres of water and requires land area “adding up to about the size of an iPad Mini.”
Streaming video on sites such as YouTube and Netflix is just as bad. According to Netflix’s data, the average streamer watches about three hours of video a day. If that is true, a month’s streaming totals over 40 kg of CO2 per person.
So, why are the environmental footprints of streaming video so high?
It is due to how data on the internet is stored and transported. The main energy demand comes from data centres. Data centres are huge facilities that contain all the equipment required to store, maintain and relay information across the internet. Servers, storage drives, cooling systems and the network itself all need power to function. Because streaming video demands more data; it demands more power.
Estimates suggest that data centres make up 1% of the global energy demand. That may not sound like a lot, but it is more than the vast majority of countries.
As individuals, we tend to focus on the power we consume to run our computers, monitors and routers. But we also need to consider the demands that our behaviours put on datacentres.
For most of us, streaming is by far the most consumptive aspect of our internet behaviour. This means, small adjustments to our streaming behaviour can have a large effect on our environmental footprints.
A new study highlights the how video streaming impacts energy consumption. It also suggests simple ways we can reduce our footprints.
Firstly, we can turn off our webcams.
Turning off your webcam during a conference call can reduce the environmental footprint by a massive 96%. For most meetings webcams are a nicety. Before we turn them on, we should appraise whether their usage is beneficial to the meeting.
Secondly, we can stream in standard definition.
Typically, streaming platforms automatically select the highest video quality. Opting to stream in lower definition can have a huge impact on data usage. All streaming services offer data-savvy users the ability to stream in lower definitions. Simply downgrading from high to standard definition can reduce the footprint by 86%.
Professor Kaveh Madani, an environmental researcher at Yale University, sees this as an issue of consent. He makes the following comparison:
“Banking systems tell you the positive environmental impact of going paperless, but no one tells you the benefit of turning off your camera or reducing your streaming quality. So without your consent, these platforms are increasing your environmental footprint.”
Incorporating this information into a streaming platforms of conference-call software would be trivial.
The point isn’t to police people’s usage. Rather, it is important that users are aware of the impact of their behaviour so that they can make informed decisions.
There is also an imperative to future proof. As nations develop their infrastructures, the number of internet users increases. Additionally, as new technologies become available, demand for data also increases. We should alter our behaviour now as it will be much more difficult if they become entrenched.
Dr Renee Obringer is the lead author of the paper: The Overlooked Environmental Footprint of Increasing Internet Use. I asked her what she thought about the ever increasing demand on datacentres.
“On the one hand, internet use is increasing every year, and it is likely that it will continue to do so well into the future. Additionally, data is increasing rapidly, and this is also likely to continue to grow. So increased internet usership plus the amounts of data we are generating points towards increasing energy use. On the other hand, we are improving the efficiency of data storage and transmission infrastructure all the time, so this may offset the aforementioned increases. There is a need for more research into the area.”
Indeed, the efficiency of datacentres is improving at a rapid pace. The high cost of running datacentres is a huge market incentive for companies to invest in energy efficiency. These incentives could be further reinforced by requiring companies to be more transparent about the environmental impacts of their products. This would allow consumers to make more informed decisions about which products they use and create competition for companies to reduce their footprints further. Unfortunately, consumer praise for green products is usually hollow. Despite many of us claiming to support sustainable products, research suggests only a quarter of us act accordingly.
Perhaps a more appropriate strategy is to look at the big picture.
Understandably, a countries energy mix has a profound effect on the carbon footprints of its citizens. For example, the carbon footprint of a biofueled Brazilian is around five times lower than that of a fossil fuel dependent South African.
Prospects for a global solution are unclear. There is considerable optimism that the recent dip in emissions may signify ‘peak carbon.’ However, at present, it is unclear whether this trend will outlive the pandemic.
Depending on your disposition, this news may be reassuring or disheartening. There is a fine balance between efficiency and growth. If we are not aware of changing trends, we cannot reap the benefits of new technology and avoid unexpected damage to our environment. Corporate and government policy aside, we should not lose sight of the impact of our own behaviour, particularly when we act collectively. We must hold our policymakers to account without absolving ourselves of individual responsibility.
I asked Dr. Obringer if the researchers followed their own advice. Her reply was unambiguous.
“Yes, we do turn off our videos! The research team is scattered across several institutions, so we never actually met in the same room. During the whole process, we met online without turning on our videos.”
It seems the most effective way to encourage change is to lead by example.
