Why broadcast & streaming need standardised sustainability metrics

Over the last few years, sustainability has risen to the top of the priority list for streaming providers and broadcasters across the globe. The media production and distribution industry often makes bold claims about reducing environmental impact, but the reality can be very different. A recent report from the DPP found that 91.7% of media companies stated they value environmental sustainability performance above other ESG factors, but that’s something that is quickly put to one side after looking at other factors, like costs. And it was only one year earlier in the same report that sustainability was at the bottom of a list of 19 considerations of vendor characteristics for a successful relationship. Not a single ESG consideration was within the top five.

So clearly, sustainability is a topic that’s on everyone’s minds. And not just in this industry; the EU called for accelerated emissions reductions and clean energy transition at COP28 this year. Companies can no longer ignore the need to reduce their emissions or change unsustainable practices. Nor can they continue to make bold statements about reducing their environmental impact, without backing that up with action.

This need to address sustainability however, comes at a time where we are all increasingly reliant on streaming services for our entertainment; with 27% of the global population streaming over 10 hours of video a week. With the global live streaming market projected to reach $34.5 billion by 2030, this growth will have an inevitable increase in the ecological footprint of video, which is a greater strain on the internet and the environment than people may realise. Only last year Netflix announced its carbon footprint for 2021 was 1.5M metric tonnes, with productions making up 58%, corporate 37% and streaming 5%. With 250 million subscribers globally, Netflix is the largest streaming service in the world and so needs to set a precedent.

Call for accountability

The Greening of Streaming is an association created to tackle the growing concerns on the energy impact of the streaming sector and to try to limit the carbon and environmental footprint from the industry, but it is difficult to realise. This is because a lot of the different data available is based on models and assumptions that if you reverse engineer, you’ll end up in a circle situation, which is arguably a bigger problem than sustainability itself.

The Greening of Streaming focuses on providing better real-world data to understand energy use relating to streaming and to share best practices through the industry community. In the UK, BBC, ITV, Channel 4, UKTV, Sky and Netflix are all required to register their footprint using the Albert Carbon Calculator, and 48 countries globally have adopted the model.

But even with these organisations operating, the industry lacks one standardised metric to measure sustainability, with KlimAktiv being a popular measurement for productions and films in Germany, Ecoprod in France and the EBU have also created a carbon calculator created as a carbon measure for co-productions.

There’s been a realisation of a disconnect between data attribution and overall energy consumption of streaming services, which doesn’t provide an overall accurate picture.

Having realised this disconnect, The Greening of Streaming launched the Low Energy Sustainable Streaming (LESS) Accord project, to develop a measurement framework for calculating the energy used in transcoding and defining an approach to measure power usage per hour for common compression formats. By establishing a set of best practices for how compression technologies should be employed across streaming video workflows, companies will be able to maximize their energy efficiency whilst maintaining a default good quality of experience for viewers.

So what’s next for the industry?

The actions that broadcasters, streamers, or any other media producers can take can be easily equated with technology. The rise in software-based production, and cloud-driven innovations means that it’s easier than ever to reduce the impacts of a production on the environment. By replacing traditional broadcast technology stacks with more cloud-based solutions, you can very quickly see how less people and equipment will be needed on the ground on location, removing the emissions both in shipping and cargo, and passenger flights.

And we know how possible it is, because more and more people are showing real-world deployments and their reduction in emissions, some by up to 90% in our own calculations. Our partners at Swedish Television for example, rolled out a new cloud-based solution to produce the 2023 European Rally Championship and post-event could show just how much of a significant difference that made to both their bottom line, but also their environmental impact.

Standardised metrics, innovation, and collaboration play an important role in addressing the environmental impact of the broadcast and streaming services. There is an industry wide need for the adoption of sustainable practices and continuous improvement in reducing emissions so we can show that we’re making a difference. As an industry we’re responsible. So, we should take responsibility. If 2023 was the year that sustainability gained awareness and reached the top of agendas, let’s make 2024 the year where we take action.

Johan Bolin is chief business officer of media and broadcast at Agile Content.