Billions of kg of CO2 could be saved by scrapping DVDs, research suggests:
A new study has shown that streaming can be much better for the environment, requiring less energy and emitting less carbon dioxide (CO2), than some traditional methods of DVD renting, buying and viewing.
The researchers, who have published their study today, 29 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, cite modern devices such as laptops and tablets as the reason for this improvement, as they are much more efficient than older, energy-sapping DVD players. Furthermore, the driving that is required to go and buy, or rent, DVDs makes this method much more energy- and carbon-intensive. A significant proportion of the energy consumption and carbon emissions for streaming comes from the transmission of data, which increases drastically when more complex, high-definition content is streamed.
In their study, the researchers, from Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and Northwestern University, estimated that if all DVD viewing in the US was shifted to streaming services in 2011, around 2 billion kg of CO2 emissions could have been avoided and around 30 petajoules (PJ) of energy saved the equivalent of the amount of electricity needed to meet the demands of 200,000 US households.
They estimated that in 2011, 192 PJ of energy was used, and 10.4 billion kg of CO2 emitted, for all methods of DVD consumption and streaming in the US.
From this, they calculated that one hour of video streaming requires 7.9 megajoules (MJ) of energy, compared to as much as 12 MJ for traditional DVD viewing, and emits 0.4 kg of CO2, compared to as much as 0.71 kg of CO2 for DVD viewing.
The study can be found here.
(Score: 1) by bob_super on Friday May 30 2014, @11:58PM
Forget streaming!
My study clearly proves that if everyone walked barefoot on dirt roads to outdoor theaters running digital projectors, we'd save the planet even faster. People walking home using only the moonlight get extra credit.
.
I didn't RTFA, so I don't know if the "study" also counted the billions of Joules spent developing the internet infrastructure and putting the cabling into the ground.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Angry Jesus on Saturday May 31 2014, @12:01AM
> I didn't RTFA, so I don't know if the "study" also counted the billions of Joules spent
> developing the internet infrastructure and putting the cabling into the ground.
It doesn't. But it also doesn't count all the times that people pick up a rental disc while out on errands instead of making a dedicated trip.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday May 31 2014, @12:08AM
That's bull. In order for you to be correct, there would have to be some sort of easy way to rent DVD/Bluray at places like grocery or convenience stores from a vending machine or something.....
Ohhhhhhhhh
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday May 31 2014, @01:50AM
Or the fact that that mailman is going to come to your mailbox whether or not he is bringing you a disk.
Once we get ALL mail via the net, and we get ALL groceries electronically, THEN these clowns can stand up and thump their chest.
In the meantime it is just another meaningless attention grabbing study.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by jmc23 on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:06AM
It doesn't count them, but it takes them into account. Read more carefully.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:57AM
> It doesn't count them, but it takes them into account. Read more carefully.
If you consider a wild ass guess of 50% of the cost of two round trips to the grocery being attributed to the DVD rental, then yeah, they took it into account. Furthermore, the paper they cited as "consistent" [mit.edu] with that cost division says nothing about video rentals, only the purchase of CDs and books.
When the more realistic 10% low case is used, the CO2 emissions are only marginally more than streaming. Couple that with their own numbers showing rental by mail to be on par with streaming and the whole conclusion falls apart.
(Score: 1) by jmc23 on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:44AM
Did I say it was appropriate or logical? You were misleading in your post.
From the other site [slashdot.org]
(Score: 1) by Angry Jesus on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:50AM
> You were misleading in your post.
It is only difficult to comprehend in your mind because you didn't RTFA or failed to understand it, which wouldn't have happened if you weren't so obtuse! [soylentnews.org]
Thanks for playing the cosmic joke game.
(Score: 3, Informative) by iwoloschin on Saturday May 31 2014, @12:21AM
Well, technically, the infrastructure was deployed for other uses (among them, cable TV, which is sort of similar), and through creative reuse we're now at a point to make a nice impact in reducing future energy expenditures. Sure, it's not capturing the total cost, but I'm not sure the total cost is important, unless you're building a brand new development and don't have any current infrastructure.
It's very similar to the funding arguments over Amtrak here in the US. Amtrak has to maintain both it's vehicles (trains) and it's roads (railroads/signal/electrical/etc), versus someone like Megabus, who just has to pay for the vehicle. On the face of it, Megabus looks a lot cheaper, but that's only because you and all of your friends have already paid for the road funding.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday May 31 2014, @12:45AM
If we eliminated all streaming, nobody would ever need more than 640kB/s. Imagine the total savings!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 31 2014, @12:59AM
Whoever paid for the road funding is not a friend of mine.
(Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:52AM
Then you either have no friends (sorry, that's actually quite sad) or you live in a nation that doesn't use any taxes to maintain it's roads, and I can't think of any off the top of my head.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:01AM
Saudi, UAE, Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahamas, Bahrain, Caymans, Bahrain.
(Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:07AM
Cool, how do they pay for their roads then? I'm genuinely interested.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:14AM
Oil, screwing over tourists (hotel room taxes, airplane ticket taxes, etc) and banking taxes (for tax havens, still tons less tax than would be owed in the original country).
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 31 2014, @08:05AM
So hotel room taxes, airplane ticket taxes, banking taxes etc. are no taxes?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:26PM
> So hotel room taxes, airplane ticket taxes, banking taxes etc. are no taxes?
Did you read the thread? The topic is universal taxes like income, sales and property. Otherwise the idea that living in a nation in which you don't know anyone who paid for the roads is nonsensical. Plus, 8 of those 10 countries don't even have screw-the-foreigner taxes, its all oil.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 31 2014, @12:33AM
My study shows that conducting studies produces a non-trivial amount of CO2.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday May 31 2014, @01:26AM
The study also doesn't account for all the CO2 emitted by transporting those DVD-es all over this world [oecdobserver.org].
Also, they forgot to account the 16% atmospheric methane [wikipedia.org] that was emitted by raising all these cattle for the leather-bound deluxe DVD editions.
Clearly, would they have counted those as well and multiply with the 20 years from the DVD inception [wikipedia.org], there be enough CO2 for 5 internets all over.
Why do you think the major ISP-es in US are so careful to not over-extend their network further? Clearly, unlike those pesky DVD eco-vandals, they carefully consider their CO2 footprint!
(ducks)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 31 2014, @03:29AM
Did it also take into account the cost of making a bazillion new devices to replace the bazillion old devices, and the cost to dispose of the latter?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Funny) by hash14 on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:31AM
Let us promptly alert the content industries of this information so they can promptly change their practices! Surely the urgency of our environmental conservation efforts will persuade them to adopt modern and more responsible technological platforms!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 31 2014, @07:30AM
Wait, wait, wait!!!
Now we can pin "Global Warming" on the MPAA and Hollywood, get all our factories and jobs back, and maybe give Dotcom a medal!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Saturday May 31 2014, @08:00AM
DRM uses cpu cycles. It might be interesting to calculate how much energy is used implementing DRM compared to non-DRM.
There has been some work done on this kind of thing, eg: "Performance and Energy Efficiency of Block Ciphers in Personal Digital Assistants" [ http://www.arias.ece.vt.edu/publications/conferenc es/park-2005-1.pdf [vt.edu] ], but I've never seen an evaluation of the energy cost of decrypting DRM every time you watch media decrypted from a DVD or Blu-Ray disc.
(Score: 1) by bornagainpenguin on Saturday May 31 2014, @01:16PM
Well I would imagine if one never uses a Hotel, flies outside of the country or takes part in a tax haven scheme, yeah then one would not be paying those taxes. And really, considering the nation states mentioned this might not be a bad assumption.