As a majority of citizens have been locked into their houses, the possibility of reducing the pollution in the country was estimated to be high. But that’s not true! The energy usage of the country has risen solely due to the usage of Netflix and other forms of entertainment that requires internet data.
How does the increased use of Netflix result in pollution? Read on for all the details!
6 Hours of Streaming Netflix Is Equivalent To Burning 1 Litre of Petrol
As the public has been locked into their houses, OTT channels, video gaming have been the primary sources of entertainment. And data used for all these has increased the use of data and in turn, increased energy usage.
A major chunk of energy is used in data-intensive video streaming, gaming, and live streaming for business, university, and school classes.
As per reports, six hours of online video streaming is equivalent to burning one liter of petrol. The reason behind this is the use of electricity that goes into powering the internet and the data centers that stream the video.
Reports have also shown that a huge amount of data is required to stream videos. The global energy consumption on Netflix alone increased by 84% in 2019 to 451,000 megawatt hours, which is sufficient to power about 40,000 average US households for a year.
The Shift Project, which is the think tank of Maxime Efoui-Hess of French has revealed its research where it is clearly stated that watching a show of duration of half an hour produces 1.6 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is as much as driving 3.9 miles (6.28 kilometres).
IT Sector Uses Up Huge Amounts Of Data
Additionally, the IT sector also uses copious amounts of energy which makes their carbon footprint equal to that of the aviation industry’s fuel emissions.
Gary Cook, who works at Greenpeace, said, “Digital videos come in very large file sizes and (are) getting bigger with each new generation of higher definition video.”
Greenpeace is an organization that tracks the carbon footprint of the IT sector