Streaming and watching online video content generates 300 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, or almost one percent of global emissions of that gas. Video services (on-demand), such as the online production company "Netflix", are responsible for a third of that figure, while only pornographic video clips on the Internet generate another third, writes the scientific magazine "New Scientist".
This means that watching porn videos annually generates as much CO2 as countries like Belgium, Bangladesh and Nigeria
This is the conclusion of the French internet platform "The Shift Project". Earlier this year, it was estimated that digital technologies produce four percent of greenhouse gas emissions and that this figure could rise to eight percent by 20125.
The greenhouse effect is a process in which, due to disturbances in the energy balance, warming of the planet Earth occurs. When part of the heat radiation, which reaches the earth's crust, is reflected into the atmosphere and, instead of going into space, it is absorbed by some gases in the atmosphere and returned to the Earth, heating it further. In this way, the temperature of the Earth's surface increases. The gases that contribute the most to this phenomenon are carbon dioxide and methane.
CO2 emissions from watching online videos are now also estimated. The French used a report from the companies "Cisco" and "Sandvine" from 2018, with which they calculated the global Internet traffic of videos. They then estimated how much electricity was used to transmit this video content and view it on different devices, from mobile phones to televisions.
Finally, they estimated total gas emissions using world average figures for the carbon dioxide emitted when the electricity is switched on.
Online videos accounted for 60 percent of global data traffic in 2018, the report said, or one zettabit of data (a thousand trillion trillion bits). The definition of "online video" in the report does not include live video streaming such as Skype calls, camgirls or telemedicine, which account for another 20 percent of global data traffic.
Prevent autoplay and high resolution
Advances to higher quality moving images, such as 8K resolution, will contribute to higher gas emissions. The same could happen with the launch of video game streaming services, such as "Google Stadia", but the authors of the report did not attempt to assess their impact.
They call for measures to limit the broadcast of online videos, as well as to prevent the automatic start of videos on the Internet and their transmission in a higher resolution if it is unnecessary. For example, some devices can now display content at a higher resolution than humans can perceive. The report states that regulation will be necessary.
The estimates are generally the same as those behind other CO2 emitters, Chris Priest, a professor at the British University of Bristol, who studies the sustainability of technologies, told "New Scientist" magazine.
"Once again, the need for designers of digital services to think carefully about the overall impact of the services they provide has been demonstrated," said Priest. "For individuals, improving our devices less often, meaning owning fewer devices, and not having high-quality mobile internet everywhere are probably the most important actions we can take."
To limit climate change, we need to reduce energy consumption and switch to renewable energy sources, said Maksim Efoui, one of the authors of the report. "The production of new energy infrastructure generates emissions, even if the electricity produced is possibly renewable," he said.
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