The carbon footprint generated by the digital industry is significant, estimated to be around 3% of the world’s overall carbon footprint. While streaming only represents a small portion of that footprint, video streaming consumption is exponentially growing. Sustainability is becoming more and more crucial for content providers and operators who deliver streaming services, as consumers are increasingly aware, and demanding more environmentally friendly services.
Video technology providers, operators and content providers in the streaming industry can come together to champion sustainability. By adopting a more sustainable approach to video streaming, they can reduce energy consumption, increase cost savings and improve collaboration. This article will explore some of the key technologies that are fueling the move towards greater sustainability in video streaming and will highlight the impact of these technologies both today and in the future.
Creating a path towards more sustainable streaming
There are several steps that video service providers can take to establish a foundation for sustainable video streaming. First, they need to consider optimising energy consumption and reducing traffic on the network in any way they can. This includes investing in efficiency and optimisation technologies.
Content providers and operators need to ask tough questions, such as whether delivering top-tier video quality is always needed. For example, delivering 4K quality on smartphones may not be necessary given the display size, a point that is currently being discussed by Greening of Streaming’s “Low Energy Sustainable Streaming” (LESS) Accord.
Collaboration is also key. Content providers and Internet service providers (ISPs) need to work together to enable energy-efficient streaming. For example, content providers can utilise some of the networks of ISPs instead of deploying their own networks to reduce their carbon footprint.
Furthermore, there’s a need for accurate, common, and standardised measurements from the field and clear language to make progress as an industry. Industry groups like Greening of Streaming are working towards defining measurements to see exactly what energy savings are possible.
Implementing advanced technologies for sustainable streaming
There are several different technologies that content providers and operators can adopt to improve the efficiency of video delivery for streaming applications.
By using less equipment and hardware in general, operators can greatly reduce energy consumption, especially considering the amount of water and AC usage required to cool down datacentre systems, not to mention the GHG produced during their manufacturing. That requires, amongst other things, optimising existing networks to deal with the growing consumer appetite for video without multiplying the datacentres and servers, and making them more efficient. Some of the technologies that content providers and operators can use to optimise their networks include edge caching, multicast ABR, elastic and dynamic CDNs, and open caching.
Edge caching involves streaming content from a closer location to the end users to reduce traffic on the network. By caching closer to end users, ISPs can improve streaming quality and reduce congestion in the delivery chain and therefore reduce the energy used at the core of the network.
With multicast ABR, ISPs can reduce the power consumption of the network, making it independent of the number of viewers. Multicast ABR technology eliminates traffic peaks by sending a single stream to millions of viewers, a solution especially efficient for live sports streaming.
Another solution to improve energy efficiency is using an elastic and dynamic CDN. Cache server workloads are only leveraged when needed and share infrastructure with other functions’ applications, achieving important energy savings.
The Streaming Video Technology Alliance (STVA) Open Caching is another approach that can improve sustainability for video streaming. The interoperable caching system unites content caching across content delivery networks (CDNs), ISPs, and content owners, allowing the video content to be pulled from local caches and reduce traffic across the network. It improves sustainability by eliminating the need for multiple third-party CDN caches inside the ISP networks.
Conclusion
According to Kantar’s Entertainment on Demand study, from September to December 2022, the number of U.S. households with video streaming rose 2.5 million, reaching a total of 115.6 million households. The average household is accessing 5.4 different streaming services, up from 5.2 in the third quarter of 2022. As video streaming traffic grows, it continues to add to the carbon footprint of delivery networks.
Reducing this footprint is a global effort that every company can play a role in, by working together, by providing more efficient, sustainable technologies, solutions and services, and by designing an ESG strategy at the corporate level.