Life Cycle Assessment of CO2 Emissions of Online Music and Videos Streaming in Japan

Abstract

In this study, we analyzed the CO2 emissions of online music and video streaming services, as one of the digital contents, in Japan using life cycle assessment. As a system boundary of online music and video streaming, processes such as data center construction and server manufacturing, usage of communication networks and internet communication technology devices (personal computers (PCs) and smartphones), and disposal of data centers and servers were considered. Data were collected using statistical and online surveys, and CO2 emissions per 1 MB of communication volume were calculated. One of the results revealed that the lifecycle CO2 emissions of listening to online music using PCs and smartphones were 5.88 × 10−4 and 1.43 × 10−4 kg-CO2/MB, respectively. The overall CO2 emissions for domestic music and video streaming services in 2019 was 921 thousand t-CO2. Online video streaming accounted for 87.7% of the total emissions, which corresponded to approximately 0.23% of domestic CO2 emissions derived from electric power generation.

“Quantifying the implications of behavioral changes induced by digitalization on energy transition: A systematic review of methodological approaches”

“…No Baumvol et al [58], applying a structural equation modelling, estimated that the indirect and rebound energy impact of online shopping can lead to a 37 % reduction of household CO2 emissions in England. Tabata and Wang [60] analyzed how the evolution of online music and video streaming adoption in Japan in four years produced lifestyle changes in society, increasing the amount of music streamed and listened to. An LCA analysis assessed that 1545 kt CO 2 emissions are related to the direct and indirect energy impact of increased online music and video streaming use.…”

A review of assessments of the greenhouse gas footprint and abatement potential of information and communication technology

“…In particular, video streaming has received a lot of attention due to a report by the French think tank The Shift Project and has led to a controversial debate about methods used for assessing the GHG footprint of ICT applications (Fuster, 2019;Kamiya, 2020;Shehabi et al, 2014;The Shift Project, 2019). Other explored ICT applications include virtual meetings (Coroamȃ et al, 2012;Warland and Hilty, 2016), ebook readers (Moberg et al, 2011), music streaming (Tabata and Wang, 2021;Weber et al, 2010), online newspapers (Bull and Kozak, 2014;Coroamȃ et al, 2015;Moberg et al, 2007) and more. Newer applications that are being investigated are blockchain applications such as cryptocurrencies (de Vries et al, 2022;Jiang et al, 2021) and the training of machine learning models (Patterson et al, 2022).…”

The role of digital content consumption in environmentally sustainable lifestyles

“…Prior studies have analyzed the energy consumption of global data centres 3,6,7 and data transmission networks [8][9][10][11] as well as the environmental impacts of the global ICT sector 5,[12][13][14] and/or essential elements of the Internet, including data centres [15][16][17] , data transmission 18 , end-user devices 19,20 , and digital services (e.g., social media 21 , video streaming [22][23][24][25] , virtual conferences [26][27][28][29][30] , arti cial inteligence 31 , cryptocurrencies [32][33][34] , and online advertising 35 ). For example, it was shown that data centres and data transmission networks jointly account for 2-3% of the global electricity consumption 2,6 , while the ICT sector (i.e., data centres, data transmission networks, and end-user devices) emitted ca.…”