What are the CO2 emissions of streaming?

Streaming is now part of everyday life. In Germany, too, 13 percent of citizens use video-on-demand services every day. RTL Deutschland and Bertelsmann have now published a white paper detailing the CO2 emissions and impact of streaming on the environment.

“Streaming has a dirty secret,” wrote The Guardians already last year. The CO2 footprint that users leave behind when they watch Netflix’s ten greatest hits for a month is therefore equivalent to a car trip across Saturn.

Germans use streaming services from TV stations

In Germany use around 29 percent of citizens video streaming services at least once a week. About 13 percent even stream daily.

In addition to international platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney Plus, the media libraries of the German television stations are also very popular in Germany.

The video-on-demand service RTL Plus is in sixth place among the most popular streaming services in Germany in 2022. More than 3.4 million subscribers are now using the portal.

RTL examines data from the in-house streaming service

RTL Germany and Bertelsmann have therefore published a white paper that shows the carbon footprint of video streaming services. As part of its sustainability strategy, the broadcaster evaluated its own usage data from RTL Plus.

Together with the experts from Bertelsmann, the studio also looked at the different factors influencing streaming on the CO2 balance.

One hour of streaming causes 42.7 grams of CO2 emissions

The analysis showed that streaming RTL Plus content for an hour causes around 42.6 grams of CO2 on average. That corresponds to a car journey of about 150 meters.

The results of the RTL study fall in comparison to a Carbon Trust study from last year a little smaller. According to this, the CO2 footprint in Europe in 2020 was around 55 grams per hour of streaming.

Less CO2 emissions when streaming with green electricity

According to both analyses, however, the decisive factor for the amount of CO2 is which end device the user uses to watch the stream. TV sets, for example, cause the highest energy consumption. Mobile phones and tablets, on the other hand, generate only a fraction of the emissions.

As RTL concludes, the emission value is also lower when users use green electricity. In addition, CO2 emissions are reduced when newer end devices run in energy-saving mode. Toggle switches also ensure lower power consumption with multiple plugs.

CO2 emissions are not solely the responsibility of the user

Dr.-Ing. Christian Herglotz from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg reviewed the RTL study. He hopes that the study will raise public awareness and have an impact on user behavior. However, the responsibility for CO2 emissions during streaming is not solely the responsibility of the users.

Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that the local computer networks of a streaming broadcaster also have an enormous energy consumption, even if it seems very small when calculated for one hour of video streaming.

In addition, within the study, RTL only examines the CO2 emissions caused by users of the in-house streaming platform. The emission value that the same users cause when streaming other offers therefore initially remains unknown.

Video streaming not as harmful as other human activities

As the Carbon Trust analysis found last year, video-on-demand streaming has a relatively small carbon footprint compared to other human activities.

However, estimating the actual carbon impact of video streaming is difficult because the values ​​depend heavily on the individual behavior of the subscribers.

RTL Germany, in turn, focuses on reducing and avoiding emissions, according to the broadcaster. The company aims to be carbon neutral by 2030.

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