Netflix on the (green) move?

For my first post on Medium, I wanted something impactful! Something that gave me this so-called “Oh s***, I HAVE to write about this” reaction to fuel me for a first (hopefully not last) short article. And guess what, I found that fuel — and time!

Last week, WiredUK shared an insightful article about Netflix’s carbon emissions. As I have been investigating Sustainable IT for some time now, I am always struggling to find data to estimate online activities’ carbon emissions. Most entreprises showed strong stances; this is true, but finding data…? Not that easy. And yep, did not say “relevant” or “accurate”, just data.

I like the article for different reasons because it shows that:

• A new major pure player is on the green move
• It takes more than a mere estimation to understand the whole extent of online habits
• It reminds me that we are at the very beginning of online habits maturity and regulations (I like to call it the Stone Age of Internet)

Thus, first, it did provide some data I could use — this data is delivered by an organisation called DIMPACT, partially industry funded though so let’s be cautious — but primarily, it shows VOD/Streaming big boys are finally on their way to a more sustainable mindset. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook have announced over the last couple years big moves (most of them promised to be carbon neutral by 2030 for instance) but the silence of VOD pure players has been, in my opinion, quite loud. YouTube made some (lukewarm?) statement actually, as WiredUK already wrote about here but I always found awkward that pure players kept silent on such things like carbon footprint. Let’s remember that the Internet traffic represents around 4% of global GHG emissions (equal to pre-Covid aviation traffic).

This article also lays stress on hard it is to debunk the real carbon footprint impact of one online action. Today, tracking the carbon footprint of a specific “online action” like purchasing a t-shirt or watching a video is a tremendously complex task. It depends on so many parameters (location, devices, infrastructures, …) and ultimately this is not easy to take all the chain of actions into account. On top of that, most of companies do not wish to share publicly such data, so finding reliable numbers is not always easy. But that’s for another day…

In the article, Netflix claims that one hour of streaming on its platform in 2020 used less than 100gCO2e (a hundred grams of carbon dioxide equivalent) — that’s less than driving an average car a quarter of a mile. I am quite skeptical about this figure, but that’s not so much the point in the end. Netflix stating they are thinking about “weighing their carbon footprint” is already excellent news and should be followed by better estimations from now on.

Most of you probably did not see that last year but The Shift Project (a French Think tank for sustainability) shared a rough estimation of Netflix’s impact on the environment and Carbon Brief replied back — fiercely — to re-estimate the numbers on this paper. The Shift Project made a couple mistakes, Carbon Brief helped them pointing them out. And now, the discussion in on and things are on the table. Aside some mistakes, they use two mindsets for their reckoning and this is the exciting part because it does require arguments to finally agree on something, right?

Speaking of the Devil, Carbon Brief is supposed to publish a white paper by the end of the month to investigate in depth Netflix’s carbon emissions and I am super hyped to read it because it should deliver a consistent set of data to use for future endeavours. Yes, I know, I am a bit nerdy…!

So I guess I already found fuel for the next shot!

Thanks for reading and please reach out on LinkedIn!