DISPELLING MYTHS
LET’S PLAY TRUE OR FALSE, HEADLINE EDITION
WATCHING A YOUTUBE VIDEO USES OVER 1600W OF ELECTRICITY, EQUIVALENT TO THE CONSUMPTION OF 15 BIG-SCREEN TVS.
CO2 EMISSIONS FROM 30 MINUTES OF NETFLIX ARE THE SAME AS DRIVING FOR ALMOST FOUR MILES.
FALSE
FALSE
TRUE
TRUE
Also false. A widely cited analysis by Uptime Institute’s Rabih Bashroush estimated that the seven billion views of the 2017 hit song Despacito had consumed 900GWh of electricity, or 1.66kWh per viewing hour. But by this logic, YouTube – which has over one billion viewing hours a day – would consume 2.5% of global electricity use, which in turn would be more than the total electricity used globally by all data centres.
False. IEA analysis states that this makes flawed assumptions and exaggerates its impact by up to 90 times. It’s a repeated claim in articles featured in The New York Post , and on CBC, Yahoo and phys.org. These figures came from a July 2019 report by The Shift Project, stating that streaming was responsible for over 300m tonnes of CO2 in 2018. It published a follow- up article in June 2020 to correct a bit/byte conversion error, revising the original “1.6kg per half hour” quote downwards by eightfold to 0.2kg per half hour.
12
NUMBERS GAME Assumptions for data transfer in 2019
These bar charts demonstrate the extent of the overestimates. The Shift Project’s analysis overshot the energy intensity of data centres and CDNs by around 35-fold, relative to the figures derived from 2019 Netflix electricity consumption data and subscriber usage data. IEA analysis shows how The Shift Project overestimated the energy intensity of data transmission networks by around 50-fold, based on average bit rates for streaming video. This is down to high and outdated energy-use assumptions for various access modes.
Shift Project (original)
10
8
6
4
2
IEA
Shift Project (corrected)
0
Data transfer
1.75
1.5
1.25
1
Shift Project
0.75
FIGURING OUT THE REALITY Assumptions for energy intensity of data centres, data transmission networks and devices in 2019
0.5
0.25
IEA
0
Data transmission (kWh/hr)
Devices (kWh/hr)
Data centres (kWh/GB)
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