Demystifying energy consumption in streaming: Interview with Greening of Streaming founder Dom Robinson

Green streaming is a concept that refers to industry and consumer efforts to reduce the energy impact of streaming by balancing quality and energy .
Green streaming is a concept that refers to industry and consumer efforts to reduce the energy impact of streaming by balancing quality and energy efficiency. Today, the energy consumption of streaming infrastructures is poorly understood, despite growing pressure from consumers and regulators that all industries seek to make sustainability a business imperative. STL Partners spoke to Dom Robinson, founder of Greening of Streaming, an organisation focused on driving industry collaboration to reduce the carbon impact of streaming, to understand where the industry is now and how it can drive change in the future.
How was Greening of Streaming born?
Conversations about green streaming and the carbon impact of video began to emerge in 2018. These discussions prompted me to write an article on ‘greening of streaming’ which attracted interest from across the global internet streaming industry and led to the creation of the Greening of Streaming members’ association. Today we capture ~70% of internet traffic in Europe and North America through our members, including Intel, Varnish, Akamai, and Lumen.
What is the energy impact of streaming; is streaming sustainable?
Streaming infrastructures are technically complex and involve many different partners, this means that it is difficult to establish how much energy is being used and who ‘owns’ the energy consumption at any given stage. The diagram below shows a simplified version of the stages of the streaming process. Each of these stages involves core access and termination, switches, amps, routers and more, equal to many thousands of components that all consume energy. You can find a more detailed version of the diagram produced by Greening of Streaming here.
Given that the volume and resolution of streamed content will continue to grow, streaming businesses, telcos, content delivery networks, and other partners in the value chain need to act now. Increasingly streaming is the tail wagging the dog on this issue, with streaming businesses placing requirements on the content delivery infrastructure, including telcos, to disclose their energy impact and take steps to reduce consumption.
But streaming must be more energy efficient than playing a CD or watching TV using a traditional cable box, right?
For consumers, streamed content might seem more energy efficient than satellite TV or other traditional ways to consume media, but it isn’t, it just makes the energy footprint less visible. Rather than paying the energy cost of satellite or cable connection yourself, the cost has been shifted onto the streaming infrastructure, including your internet provider and streaming service.
What can telcos do to reduce the energy consumption of streaming?
Understanding how energy is used by streaming infrastructure during a live event is a great place for the industry to start getting to grips with the energy consumption of streaming. This is because live video requires all players in the value chain to communicate at one point in time, generating the fullest picture of energy consumption. It will then be relatively easier for ecosystem players to apply the lessons learnt through live streaming to the on-demand context.
This diagram shows the relationship between traffic and network energy consumption during a live streamed event:
Figure 2: The relationship between traffic, network capacity, and power consumption during live-streamed events
Source: Adapted by STL Partners from Schien, Shabajee and Priest
Importantly it shows that high traffic during a live streamed event does not increase load or energy consumption of the network. Instead, it shows that the capacity of the network dictates energy consumption, no matter how many people are tuning in to watch.
This is a really significant finding, as it shows that energy consumption remains peaked for the...