General Context 

Recent studies forecast a global warming of 3.1°C in 2100 if the GHG emissions do not decrease. Hence, every part of our society must urgently aim sobriety, including the digital world, that is not intangible, contrary to popular belief. Video consumption takes a significant part among the emissions of the digital world and constitutes a representative example of unbounded and energy-consuming digital system. In that context, a crucial question to tackle is how to set limits to the deployment of a digital system, and for example to video delivery systems? This question is, by nature, lying at the crossroad of many fields (including human and social sciences). Interestingly, many initiatives have recently emerged at the regional level, e.g., the rapprochement between the GIS Marousin and video processing scientists of INSA and IRISA, and set interesting perspectives of wide collaborative user experiments. In that context, the VideoImpact project proposes to answer the following questions: In order to set a sobriety policy, what should we limit in priority? the number of hours spent by a user watching videos? The TV screen size? The video resolutions? The deployment of more efficient digital infrastructure? The VideoImpact project aims at developing i) an environmental footprint model for the video delivery chain to identify the clear levers to sobriety, ii) a solid network of industrial and academic partners of the Rennes’ neighborhood around the goal of reducing the environmental impact of video consumption and iii) to launch a concrete experimentation in collaboration with Human and Social scientists. The conclusions will be used in the context of further collaborations with Human and Social Scientists to set real user experiments to assess the feasibility and acceptance of such levers.

Scientific Context

An urgent need for (digital) sobriety –

The sixth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [1] states that if we want to keep the global warming under 1.5°C (Paris agreement), one should target a global emissions decrease of 50% when compared to those of 2019. This corresponds to a decrease of 7.6% per year [2]. And this is not the path that is currently taken: recent studies forecast a global warming of 3.1°C in 2100 if nothing changes [3]. Hence, every part of our society must urgently aim sobriety.

Evolution of video delivery –

Video delivery has evolved considerably over the last 30 years, leading to a huge increase in media consumption. Since the late 1990s, DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) technology has enabled linear TV to be broadcast by satellite (DVB-S) and terrestrial microwave links (DVB-T), increasing the number of broadcasted channels. The expansion of broadband networks has made it possible to develop new video services such as TV broadcast over the Internet (IPTV), replay TV and Video On Demand (VOD). Advances in microelectronics technology mean that digital video can be captured, broadcast, and displayed anytime, anywhere, making video a ubiquitous part of our lives. This has led to new end-user devices, such as smartphones able to capture and view video, and to the growth of video-sharing services. The consequence is clear: video traffic explodes. It is estimated to grow by 79% between 2021 and 2027 [4].

Internet traffic explosion due to video –

The rapid emergence of these new services leads to a sharp increase in the amount of data exchanged over digital infrastructures. Between 2012 and 2022, Internet traffic has increased 20-fold in France. Video content accounts for most of the world’s data traffic. According to Sandvine [5], video traffic increased by 24% in 2022 and accounted for 65% of all Internet traffic in 2023. By way of example, the leader in VOD, Netflix, accounted for 15% of Europe internet traffic in 2022. This data traffic is supported by a digital infrastructure whose hardware resources are constantly increasing to cope with this growth in traffic.

Environmental Impact of Digital Word –

Contrary to popular belief, the digital world is not intangible nor dematerialized. According to [6], its emission of greenhouse gas (GHG) corresponded to 4% of the global emissions in 2019 (equivalent to the global air traffic), and this percentage could be doubled in 2025. Concretely, these GHG emissions would be due to (i) the energy consumed by the data centers (19%), the network (16%) and the terminals (20%) but also due to (ii) the production of computers, TVs, smartphones (45%) [6]. Hence, our today’s research effort should focus on digital sobriety.

Environmental Impact of Video Delivery –

Video consumption takes a significant part among these emissions [7]. The most significant part of environmental impact comes from the terminal manufacturing and its consumption during the video display. However, [7] also shows that VOD or more generally online video, has a stronger impact per hour consumed when compared to regular TV. Indeed, online video streaming implies a huge energy-consuming infrastructure. In [8], it is shown that online video streaming constituted 60% of the global data flow, and, by itself, generated 1% of the global emissions in 2018 (as much as a country like Spain emits). And, as explained previously, this quantity explodes. This trend is unsustainable, and solutions must be found to reduce the environmental impact of the video ecosystem. Because it is one of the most
energy-consuming digital system, and because its growth is predicted to be exponential in the coming years, video delivery service is the perfect case study for the following general question: for the sake of sobriety, how to set limits to the deployment of a digital system? 

A recent rapprochement between digital sciences and human and social sciences –

Naturally, this research question cannot be answered only by the scientists from Computer Science, Mathematics or Telecommunications fields. As it deals with rules, regulation, user behavior, citizens’ acceptance, and economical model shift, this general question must also imply Social and Human scientists (e.g., lawyers, sociologists, economists), private companies, elected officials and stakeholders. Several initiatives towards studying the digital sobriety from a multidisciplinary viewpoint have recently emerged at the national level through close collaboration between regulatory authorities (ARCOM, ARCEP) and ecological transition agency (ADEME) [7], ecological transition think-thank (The Shift Project) [8, 6] or at the local level with the emergence in 2024 of a new research team in the human and social sciences domain at INSA Rennes and the CMA project ESOS1. The emerging team La Fabrique de la Pens´ee Critique (LFPC, critical thinking factory: science, technology, society and environment) looks at the place of science and technology in society, their involvement in public and private decision-making, and their impact on the environment, society and individuals. This team is leaded by Clement Mabi holder of a Junior Professor Chair and researcher in information and communication sciences and includes Sébastien Shulz, digital sociologist. The CMA project ESOS (PIA 2030) aims at developping new training courses and
research activities in the domain of sustainable electronic In the same way, an interesting initiative for our project is the rapprochement between the GIS Marsouin2 and Inria. In June 20243, a first workshop on the digital sobriety has been organized to outline the first contours of further collaboration and experimentation. Interestingly, a special focus on “setting limits to the global video consumption” has been done. In December, a second workshop has been organized. One of the outcome is a precise project of experimentation on that topic, and that we propose to develop, among other goals, in the “VideoImpact” project.

References:

[1] Z. Zhongming, L. Linong, Y. Xiaona, Z. Wangqiang, L. Wei et al., “Ar6 synthesis report: Climate change 2022,”2022.
[2] V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P. R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock et al., “Global warming of 1.5 c,” An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of, vol. 1, no. 5, pp. 43–50, 2018.
[3] United Nations Environment Programme, “Emissions gap report 2024: No more hot air . . . please! with a massive gap between rhetoric and reality, countries draft new climate commitments,” 2024-10. [Online]. Available: https://wedocs.unep.org/20.500.11822/46404
[4] P. Jonsson, S. Carson, S. Davis et al., “Ericsson mobility report (2021),” Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden, 2021.
[5] I. Sandvine, “Global internet phenomena report,” Phenomena, 2024.
[6] H. Ferreboeuf, F. Berthoud, P. Bihouix, P. Fabre, D. Kaplan, L. Lefèvre et al., “Lean ICT-towards digital
sobriety,” Report for the Think Tank The Shift Project, vol. 6, 2019.
[7] ARCEP, ARCOM, “Etude de l’impact environnemental des usages audiovisuels en france,” Oct. 2024.