they will be asked to provide an organisation’s Scope 3 emissions stemming from a specific facility. An article by John Booth at Carbon3IT suggested this would ‘cause angst within the DC community’ as operator billing – and therefore data collection – is presently centred around the rack (including space and cooling), and the energy used by the rack and IT equipment within it. Whether or not DCs are currently configured in a way that enables provision of all the necessary information, it seems that upcoming regulatory efforts will force this change and, hopefully, serve to bring greater transparency to the sector. OTHER APPROACHES AND LIFECYCLE ISSUES Nonetheless, given the scale of the challenge, no response can be one-dimensional. Announcing a recent report (Sustainability in Video Entertainment) issued by video and mobile technology developer Interdigital and written by Futuresource Consulting, Simon Forrest – principal technology analyst at Futuresource Consulting – highlighted the existential dichotomy broadcast and media are confronting. “The video industry is now laser-focused on increasing the sustainability of visual entertainment,” he remarks. “From filming and content creation, through broadcast distribution and internet streaming, to consumer devices themselves, all elements of the delivery chain are actively improving efficiency. Yet there are continuous challenges: on current trajectories, global TV energy usage alone could increase 5% by 2026 as consumers upgrade to higher-resolution screens and transition to 4K
THE VIDEO INDUSTRY IS NOW LASER-FOCUSED ON INCREASING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF VISUAL ENTERTAINMENT
HDR video. So, there are clear opportunities for further innovation in video coding and delivery mechanisms to help mitigate this potential rise.” The paper argues that energy-aware streaming protocols promise over 50% in energy savings per hours of content, which obviously brings positive consequences for DC demand. It is also probable that more alternatives or complements to the existing DC-orientated cloud model will emerge. Storj has developed Storj DCS, which it describes as the first open-source decentralised cloud solution. Instead of owning or operating DCs, Storj provides a distributed network of independent nodes where data is encrypted, split into smaller pieces and then spread worldwide. “A lot of people like to think about us as the AirBnB of cloud storage,” says Storj CTO Jacob Willoughby, “in the sense that we use latency capacity for storage like they do for places to stay.” It’s also a model that allows for the lifecycle of hard drives to be optimised – a factor that he evidently feels should receive far more attention in general. “The manufacturing of the computer equipment itself needs highlighting, because up to 62% of the life-stages of a hard drive is in the raw material extraction and pre-processing,” he says, alluding to another Storj white paper that underlines how geographically complex – and thus carbon- intensive – these processes can be. In the absence of a universal, industry-wide initiative that everyone can get behind right away, it’s an issue that requires a great deal to be done simultaneously by different sectors, and as soon as possible. But if two aspects were to be highlighted for urgent discussion, it’s fair to suggest that they are the push towards higher and higher resolutions (surely now there is a compelling environmental case to be made for 8K being the absolute ceiling for standard M&E production?) and the long-term impact of AI. Ethical and employment issues are dominating the AI debate, but left unattended the environmental consequences could be catastrophic. Approaching new technologies in a spirit of caution is not something that has always found favour in M&E. But the centrality of DCs to new areas of production is so fundamental, and presently so all-pervasive, that a tunnel-visioned approach to technology is no longer acceptable. A truly holistic approach to production and its environmental impact is the only way forward, but given the scale and urgency of the challenge, it can be difficult to muster too much optimism.
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