Surprise! Digital Downloads Have Bigger Carbon Footprint Than Most Discs

[Dark Knifer]

Wouldn't it be pointless considering the install time from the disk still involves your computer running, therefore power and the actually playing time being the most considerable use of the electricity?

 

[pejhmon]

This doesn't factor in patches, which on-the-shelf games are generally behind on since they wont just replace the disk every time a patch is released. This isn't so much an issue with console games, since patches are added onto the hard drive as opposed to on the core files of the disk, but for PC games patches can involve removing and replacing certain core files, meaning you would in fact be double installing certain elements of the game.

And that's a point, if I'm buying a PC game on steam/gog etc, it will download and be auto installed (with the exception of some first time DirectX setups) from that initial click, however on a disk the installer has to load, extract files, install, then update.

I just feel that there's more elements to this than pointed out, however the study did mention that "there are a lot of factors to consider". It's interesting nonetheless

 

[direkiller]

Ah, research for sake of research with no logic involved. Digital download carbon emissions are exactly 0. Neither end user machines nor servers emit any carbon. As far as electricity consumed, this is irrelevant. for that you should look at making plants more carbon efficient, not force end users into middle ages (hey, before electricity was discovered we didnt use any).
This research also does not make sense in a form of tunnel vision. They take ALL the aspects of digital download and compare it to a single smal lfactor of retail distribution. have they accounted for plastic manufacturing, delivery via mail planes, users driving to gamestop, gamestop having to be run that uses electricity, ect? no, they didnt. because then they would see that their confirmation bias was wrong.

they also completely fail to factor in communication speed. For example me downloading a game in 3 minutes will use far less energy than somone running his PC for 2 week straight on a dialup connection.

Simply put, the amount of additional time you leave a console on when downloading a game(+ running servers servers and such), puts out more carbon then burning a game to a disk and delivering it to a retail store.

Neither console not servers put out ANY carbon. they dont breathe or burn.

The production of the electricity used for them dose.

 

[direkiller]

Irrelevant when you consider coal, vehicles that run on gas and whatnot. Let's do away with those first.

Nag, just use peanut oil and chip fat with diesel engines

wont work. diesel engines still work as combustion engines and thus produce large amounts of CO2. they just make less OTHER dangerous chemicals compared to Coal. as far as carbon goes burning is burning.

Plant oil can only ever be carbon neutral.
The carbon is taken from the air when the plant grows, so when you burn it there is no additional carbon put into the air.
What you use the rest of the plant for can make the whole process a minor carbon sink.

 

[direkiller]

Double post

 

[Lightknight]

Ok... the difference is anywhere from .59 kg CO2/kWh less per game to 5 kg CO2/kWh more per game.

Does anyone know if these numbers matter? Are these significant? As far as I can tell, a 100 Watt bulb run 4 hours a day for a year and hits 100 kg CO2/kWh. So if a 40 GB game is 3 more kg CO2/kWh, what does that mean in any scheme? Even at the 5 kg rate I'd have to download 20 LARGE games in a year just to hit the one bulb mark for that year.

I... just don't think this is a problem and I'm the asshole that replaced all my bulbs with the 13 Watt replacements.

Sorry, I left out the amount that a single 100 Watt bulb takes up in a year of average use. It's 20 times the largest files they tested which were 100GB files.

So 20 100GB files are roughly equivalent to using a single 100 Watt Bulb for a year. Thanks to Bluray limitations, most games are around 50GBs. So it'd be 40 AAA games in one year to equal one of those bulbs.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but not a big deal?

 

[Strazdas]

Neither console not servers put out ANY carbon. they dont breathe or burn.

The production of the electricity used for them dose.

Thats irrelevant though. Type of electrical production does not depends on which way you get your games.

Plant oil can only ever be carbon neutral.
The carbon is taken from the air when the plant grows, so when you burn it there is no additional carbon put into the air.
What you use the rest of the plant for can make the whole process a minor carbon sink.

Fair enough, that does make sense, however that does still offset the carbon over time due to plans no longer being able to be carbon positive and humans needing to breath.

 

[direkiller]

Neither console not servers put out ANY carbon. they dont breathe or burn.

The production of the electricity used for them dose.

Thats irrelevant though. Type of electrical production does not depends on which way you get your games.

Plant oil can only ever be carbon neutral.
The carbon is taken from the air when the plant grows, so when you burn it there is no additional carbon put into the air.
What you use the rest of the plant for can make the whole process a minor carbon sink.

Fair enough, that does make sense, however that does still offset the carbon over time due to plans no longer being able to be carbon positive and humans needing to breath.

Which has been taken care of by natural carbon sinks like Forest & swamps.
Coal/oil/gas is what remains of old carbon sinks.
The problem is not that we produce carbon(plants and animals have been doing that for millions of years), it's that we are producing too much for current carbon sinks to cope with.



Edit:"Thats irrelevant though. Type of electrical production does not depends on which way you get your games."
Yes it is entirely relevant.
The amount of carbon used to produce the electricity used in the device matters.

 

[seris]

how can this be anywhere near true when i can download a 50gb game in like 30 minutes.

 

[Fanghawk]

Kieren Mayers: Dr. Kieren Mayers is Head of Technical Compliance at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, which
markets, distributes, and sells PlayStation(R) products and software across 110 countries worldwide,
and is responsible for environmental strategy and management as well as other compliance issues
within the company. He is also maintains an academic interest as an Executive in Residence at
INSEAD University in France and has published a number of articles on environmental subjects.
Kieren has over 15 year's experience working within the electronics, gaming, and recycling sectors.

I dunno, I'm not inclined to trust a company accurately reporting their own carbon footprint, when it's in their best financial interest for this carbon footprint to be as low as possible. If this was a 3rd party inspection or something, that'd be great. "Show me the carfax" and all that.

That is interesting, but in this case, I really doubt there's a conspiracy. This was published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, and is subject to fact-checking by other researchers and scientists instead of Sony staff or executives. Also, while I missed the acknowledgement in the study the first time around, they're upfront about the Sony connection and note that this was done as private research:

Kieren Mayers is presently Head of Environment and Technology Compliance at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. The article is written in his private capacity as a researcher at INSEAD. The research does not necessarily reflect the views of Sony, and no official endorsement should be inferred.

But even setting all that aside, Sony is making the biggest push into digital gaming out of the "Big Three". It has perhaps the biggest online games library for a console, offers weekly PS Plus deals, and is rolling PlayStation Now game streaming. To publish a study like this makes all of those initiatives look bad.

If discs were so awful, they wouldn't need to cover up anything at this point, just say, "Yeah, we know discs are bad. That's why we're phasing them out soon. Buy digital!"

 

[medv4380]

I think this falls apart if we start talking about sales in the US. They're effectively saying that there is no cost for driving to the store and driving back. That price comes per disk, no bulk rates apply.

Incorrect, they are accounting for driving to the store and back. They estimate that at being 0.43 kg CO2. That is the estimated gas consumption. A gallon of gas should generate 6.35 kg CO2 [http://www.stewartmarion.com/carbon-footprint/html/carbon-footprint-car.html], but it'll vary. They're assuming you're going to spend 0.07 gallons, and that the store is 2 miles away, and that your car get 30 mpg. For me it's about 4 miles, and would effectily double that to 0.86 kg CO2. I have no idea what the actual averages distance and mpg should be. However, they should have given a worst case of 10 miles at 15 mpg, and a very best case of post office delivery.

The problem lies with their actual power consumption. They estimate the energy usage as generating 2.26 kg CO2 which is almost all of the CO2 contribution for digital. They estimate physical media at being only 1.2 kg CO2, and both numbers exclude things which are identical, like game play.

Lets assume that the energy usage for physical is correct.

The Internet Energy breaks down as for their "best" case
Router: 300 Watt Hours per Gigabyte
Network Access: 80 Watt Hours per Gigabyte
Transmission: 80 Watt Hours per Gigabyte
Data center: 0 Watt Hours worst case was an absurd 1000 Watt Hours per Gigabyte

So 460 Watt Hours equals 2.26 kg CO2.
This is a bad conversion. Even at its worst 1 kWh equals about 2 kg CO2 [http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11]. It should be 0.92 kg CO2. But their using some weird UK values, and maybe Coal is much worse in the UK then in the US given transportation costs.

Then the estimates on the router energy consumption is just wrong. The average power consumption for a router is about 10 Watts. Ether they've estimated a horrible download speed close to dial-up, or they've estimated the router consumption to be about 1200 watts. Their document even claims that they're estimating using about a 10 to 15 mbps line to download so they've estimated way too much energy for that little router.

At my speed of 11 mbps I can get 1 Gigabyte in about 15 minutes if everything is clear and dedicated just to that download. My router should only eat about 2 - 3 watt hours. This changes the math to be 163 watt hours per gigabyte. Making it so it only produces 0.326 kg CO2.

They could probably tack on an Idle PS3 running at 200 watts for 15 min making it 213 watt hours per gigabyte, or 0.426 kg CO2.

This means that the Digital CO2 footprint is smaller until it hits 3.7 Gigs. This assumes that their 1.2kg CO2 was correct for physical, and given their errors I have my doubts. The internet energy could also be over blown as well, and have less than the 160 watts the phone company is assumed to be spending.

The Internet keeps getting more efficient with time. Back in the dial-up days 1 Gigabytes would probably cost about 3kWh per Gigabyte, and now it's much lower.

Then we have States that have hydro with some coal, and my state generates is about 917lb CO2 per megawatt hour, or 0.416 kg CO2 per kWh so for me my foot print is about 0.067 kg CO2 per Gigabyte so my break even point is about 17 Gigabytes.

But that's what happens when you have the 38th lowest CO2 emissions in the country for electricity.

 

[geldonyetich]

Well, I learned something new today, I never would have thought that much carbon emissions would be spent on simply using the web.

I can't help but think that the real point here has nothing to do with physical media versus digital media. The real point is that we need to switch more of our power generation infrastructure to green methods, as apparently power use is going way up.

It's not like we're lacking in choice for green energy these days. We know quite well how to harness hydro, solar, geothermal, and wind power. Other than being chintzy, there's no reason that every house and building should not be capable of being self-powered these days.

 

[TessaraVejgan]

For me this is just another "research" with random numbers pulled out of someones ass made to look like it makes sense and means anything.

 

[grigjd3]

I think this falls apart if we start talking about sales in the US. They're effectively saying that there is no cost for driving to the store and driving back. That price comes per disk, no bulk rates apply.

Incorrect, they are accounting for driving to the store and back. They estimate that at being 0.43 kg CO2. That is the estimated gas consumption. A gallon of gas should generate 6.35 kg CO2 [http://www.stewartmarion.com/carbon-footprint/html/carbon-footprint-car.html], but it'll vary. They're assuming you're going to spend 0.07 gallons, and that the store is 2 miles away, and that your car get 30 mpg. For me it's about 4 miles, and would effectily double that to 0.86 kg CO2. I have no idea what the actual averages distance and mpg should be. However, they should have given a worst case of 10 miles at 15 mpg, and a very best case of post office delivery.

The problem lies with their actual power consumption. They estimate the energy usage as generating 2.26 kg CO2 which is almost all of the CO2 contribution for digital. They estimate physical media at being only 1.2 kg CO2, and both numbers exclude things which are identical, like game play.

Lets assume that the energy usage for physical is correct.

The Internet Energy breaks down as for their "best" case
Router: 300 Watt Hours per Gigabyte
Network Access: 80 Watt Hours per Gigabyte
Transmission: 80 Watt Hours per Gigabyte
Data center: 0 Watt Hours worst case was an absurd 1000 Watt Hours per Gigabyte

So 460 Watt Hours equals 2.26 kg CO2.
This is a bad conversion. Even at its worst 1 kWh equals about 2 kg CO2 [http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11]. It should be 0.92 kg CO2. But their using some weird UK values, and maybe Coal is much worse in the UK then in the US given transportation costs.

Then the estimates on the router energy consumption is just wrong. The average power consumption for a router is about 10 Watts. Ether they've estimated a horrible download speed close to dial-up, or they've estimated the router consumption to be about 1200 watts. Their document even claims that they're estimating using about a 10 to 15 mbps line to download so they've estimated way too much energy for that little router.

At my speed of 11 mbps I can get 1 Gigabyte in about 15 minutes if everything is clear and dedicated just to that download. My router should only eat about 2 - 3 watt hours. This changes the math to be 163 watt hours per gigabyte. Making it so it only produces 0.326 kg CO2.

They could probably tack on an Idle PS3 running at 200 watts for 15 min making it 213 watt hours per gigabyte, or 0.426 kg CO2.

This means that the Digital CO2 footprint is smaller until it hits 3.7 Gigs. This assumes that their 1.2kg CO2 was correct for physical, and given their errors I have my doubts. The internet energy could also be over blown as well, and have less than the 160 watts the phone company is assumed to be spending.

The Internet keeps getting more efficient with time. Back in the dial-up days 1 Gigabytes would probably cost about 3kWh per Gigabyte, and now it's much lower.

Then we have States that have hydro with some coal, and my state generates is about 917lb CO2 per megawatt hour, or 0.416 kg CO2 per kWh so for me my foot print is about 0.067 kg CO2 per Gigabyte so my break even point is about 17 Gigabytes.

But that's what happens when you have the 38th lowest CO2 emissions in the country for electricity.

There's more wrong with these numbers than you've brought up. Brand new us vehicles average 25.4 mpg (http://www.autonews.com/article/20140403/oem05/140409928/average-fuel-economy-of-new-u.s.-vehicles-rises-to-25.4-mpg), and the average fuel efficiency across the fleet of vehicles being driver in the US is much lower. A better estimate would be ~20 mpg. Two miles is likely an underestimate of distance to the store in US (though you pointed this out). Finally, average mpg tends to mix in long drives with short drives. A trip to the store has a higher than average rate of starting and stopping the motor (engine starts per mile) along with stop signs and stop lights that should further drag down the average mpg. Also, the calculation of energy consumption for the data transmission appears to assume that these devices would otherwise not be operating. I can't speak for everyone, but my computer and router are always on and almost never in a "sleeping" state. The only piece of hardware that one could reasonably assume is not otherwise operating is the digital store-side server that sends the data.

Perhaps the worst part of this estimation is the assumption that you necessarily can separate the two forms of distribution. These days new games, even though you may buy them on disk, still have huge pieces that are downloaded. If I buy a new game and stick it into my PC, PS3 or Wii U, this will immediately be followed by a forced download. I will be unable to play the game otherwise. This means that all the pieces, every last one, that is being assumed in the digital distribution cost, is also a part of the physical media cost.

 

[blackrave]

And carbon footprint is important because?

 

[MHR]

The moral I see from this story is that we're having to consider ridiculous nickle-and-diming of carbon footprints, but no matter what we do whether it be coal-rolling down to the gamestop to pick up the disk or downloading it while firing up the charcoal barbeque, we're pumping out enough CO2 to fill a fucking ocean.

We should go nuclear. It's the big glowy green boogeyman that loves to scare the sheep and it pumps out green sludge that makes your geiger counter go crazy, but at least you can lock it up inside a hollowed out desert mountain instead of having your kids huff it, and you can tell the bumpkins to leave the scary stuff to the eggheads.

 

[Fanghawk]

And carbon footprint is important because?

The bigger the carbon footprint, the more carbon gets into the atmosphere to cause global warming/climate change.

 

[blackrave]

And carbon footprint is important because?

The bigger the carbon footprint, the more carbon gets into the atmosphere to cause global warming/climate change.

1)You do not "cause" climate change- you can only slightly accelerate or decelerate it
2)Planet itself pumps so much carbon compounds into atmosphere that we pale in comparison
3)Only actual danger to environment is locally concentrated emission of large amount of carbon, due to acidic rains and similar short term effects
4)What actually matters is other emissions that can fuck up atmosphere (for example freon)
5)Also problem is pollution of oceans with solid or liquid garbage (something we do a lot)

Dammit people, know your enemy- our CO2 emissions barely qualifies as danger to anything

 

[ObserverStatus]

Only actual danger to environment is locally concentrated emission of large amount of carbon, due to acidic rains and similar short term effects

It's not just the rain that's becoming acidic, it's the whole damn ocean. I don't know if you've been reading the news lately, but entire marine ecosystems are collapsing.