Scope
The International Energy Agency (IEA) works with countries worldwide to shape energy policies for a secure and sustainable future. IEA Reports and related papers introduce several energy consumption and carbon footprint aspects of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) related to EXIGENCE interests and scope, including the following:
I. New EU rules about accessing smart metering data [1] and also a new emissions trading scheme (“ETS2”) [2].
II. Data Centers and Data Transmission Networks energy use, including renewable energy use, and carbon footprint [1, 3]
III. Energy Consumption in Broadband communication networks, including 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) [6, 7] and Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint of streaming video [9, 10].
Summary
I. New EU rules about accessing smart metering data and new emissions trading scheme (“ETS2”)
New EU rules adopted in June 2023 aim to improve interoperability between customers, utilities, and eligible third parties that wish to access smart metering data while protecting consumers [1]. The new rules allow stakeholders to access historical smart meter data from 2019 onwards, including near-real-time data [11].
Under the new act, consumers will be able to get easy access to their metering data and also give permission for data on their energy consumption or generation to be used by third parties in ways which benefit them. This might include, for example, receiving a tailor-made estimation of what contract would be best and cheapest to meet their energy needs, renewable energy installations or energy savings. In this way, the new rules are an essential enabler for the European Green Deal and REPowerEU, empowering consumers to actively participate in the energy transition and giving them access to more affordable energy [1].
For businesses and system operators, these rules, and those to come with the next wave of data-implementing acts, will facilitate their operation on the internal market and the easy, safe, and secure flow of data to those who need it. In turn, this will help operators improve existing processes and incentivize the development and delivery of new energy services, such as energy sharing and demand response [1].
Accordingly, a new emissions trading scheme (“ETS2”) is outlined concerning the Social Climate Fund [2]. The Social Climate Fund is sourced by a dedicated share of the revenues from the auctioning of emission allowances under the new emissions trading scheme (“ETS2”) that will put a carbon price on the fuels used in buildings, road transport and other sectors as of 2027, hence further strengthening heat pumps’ competitiveness. Beyond the Social Climate Fund, the ETS2 will also provide significant auction revenues for EU countries to support the green transition, notably in the building sector [12, 13].
II. Data Centers and Data Transmission Networks energy use, renewable energy use and carbon footprint
The Net Zero Innovation Hub for Data Centers is a pan-European initiative which seeks to address key sectoral challenges in concrete innovation projects and establish stronger links between operators, suppliers, and governments, acting as a gateway for innovation and partnerships in Europe. Particularly, it is involved with the following topics:
- Heat reuse: optimising data centre heat reuse for district heating systems and industrial purposes across Europe.
- Grid balancing: use of the electrical data centre infrastructure for power export and load shifting.
- Clean power generation: exploring alternatives to conventional generators for backup power generation.
- Building material decarbonisation: exploring the opportunities and removing the barriers to using green building materials in data centre construction.
Considering statistics about data centres and data transmission networks, between 2015 and 2022, internet users globally increased by 80%, internet traffic increased five-fold, and data centre workloads increased more than quadrupled [3]. Data centres and transmission networks accounted for 1–1.5% of global electricity use in 2022.
Global trends in digital and energy indicators [3, 4, 5] for 2015–2022 show that the Data centre workloads increased by 340%, from 180 million (2015) to 800 million (2022). Considering the estimation of the global energy use of data centres [3, 4] and previous versions [3, 5] complemented with reported energy consumption data from large data centre operators to be equal to 200 TWh in 2018, 200-250 TWh in 2020, and 220-320 TWh in 2021.
However, Data centre energy use (excluding crypto) increased only by +20–70% (from 200 TWh (2015) to 240–340 TWh (2022)). Thus, crypto mining energy use is the leading cause of the increase in energy use (from 4 TWh (2015) to 100–150 TWh (2022) +2300–3500%). Cryptocurrencies accounted for an additional 80–100 TWh in 2020, or around 0.4% of global electricity use [3, 4, 5]. Interestingly, based on estimates of global ICT energy use [3] and shares of data centre workloads and data centre IP traffic attributed to Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is estimated that AI likely accounted for less than 0.2% of global electricity use in 2021 (50 TWh).
Considering the tracking of CO2 emissions of the data centres and data transmission networks that underpin digitalisation [3, 14, 15], they accounted for around 330 Mt CO2 equivalent in 2020 (including embodied emissions), equivalent to 0.9% of energy-related GHG emissions (or 0.6% of total GHG emissions). Interestingly, since 2010, emissions have grown modestly despite the rapidly growing demand for digital services [3].
Considering efforts for renewable energy use [3], Apple (2.8 TWh), Google (18.3 TWh), Meta (9.4 TWh) and Microsoft (13 TWh) purchased or generated enough renewable electricity to match 100% of their operational electricity consumption in 2021 (primarily in data centres). Amazon consumed 30.9 TWh (85% renewable) across their operations in 2021, intending to achieve 100% renewables by 2025. Although a few network operators have achieved 100% renewables (including BT, TIM and T-Mobile), data transmission network operators generally lag behind data centre operators in renewable energy purchase and use. However, matching 100% of annual demand with renewable energy purchases or certificates does not mean that data centres and data transmission networks are powered exclusively by renewable sources.
Accordingly, Google and Microsoft have announced 2030 targets, and Iron Mountain a 2040 target, to source and match zero-carbon electricity on a 24/7 basis within each grid where demand is located [3]. Also, a growing number of organisations are working towards 24/7 carbon-free energy to match their electricity demand hourly, which could stimulate the deployment of a wider portfolio of flexible technologies needed for net zero transitions in the power sector [3].
III. Energy Consumption in Broadband communication networks, including 5G and IoT, and Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint of streaming video
Mobile data traffic is projected to grow quickly, more than tripling, between 2023 – 2028 [6, 7, 8]. 5G’s share of global mobile data traffic is projected to rise to 70% by 2028, up from 27% in 2023, driven by early adopters of 5G, including the United States, China, the Republic of Korea and European countries. 5G networks are expected to be more energy efficient than 4G per traffic unit and benefit from improved sleep modes. However, higher traffic volumes and a higher number of base stations are likely to increase overall energy and emissions, as studies from developed countries, including France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, indicate.
IoT adoption is expected to grow rapidly over the next five years, reaching 35 billion connections by 2028 [6, 7, 8]. The low latency and high data throughput of 5G is also expected to accelerate cellular IoT adoption, which could double to 5.5 billion connections. IoT devices are generally expected to be energy efficient. Still, the sheer growth in the number of IoT devices could have important implications for standby energy use and embodied energy and material in IoT devices.
Recent estimates considering energy consumption of streaming video published by the IEA refer to 80–180 Wh per hour and the Carbon Trust to 220 Wh, resulting in energy use not directly proportional to data traffic [9, 10]. Based on typical viewership patterns today, the vast majority of end-to-end energy use (i.e. from the data centre to the viewing devices) is consumed by end-user devices and home networking equipment [9, 10]. The specific conclusions are obtained under the specific assumptions of IEA reports. However, the contributions of all devices and components in the end-to-end path need to be considered to design effective user incentives for energy consumption and carbon footprint reduction.
More specifically, considering emissions from one hour of video streaming (European average 2020), the Carbon Trust states that end-user devices account for 51% of total emissions and energy of video streaming, home routers account for 38%, network transmission (core and access) accounts for 10%, and data centres (including hosting, encoding, and CDNs) account for only 1% [10].
Online gaming typically consumes more energy than streaming video from higher data intensity and more energy-intensive devices [9, 10]. Considering the carbon intensity of different gaming methods, downloading was the least carbon-intensive (47g CO2e per hour), followed by disc (55g) and cloud (149g). Also, cloud gaming is up 30-300% more energy intensive than local gaming, consuming 100–1000 kWh annually per user. It is also estimated that gaming could have consumed 34 TWh in 2016, in the United States.
References
[1] IEA. (2024). Electricity.
[2] IEA. (2023). Energy efficiency 2023.
[3] IEA. (2023a). Data Centres and Data Transmission Networks.
[4] IEA. (2023b). Data and statistics.
[5] IEA. (2017). Digitalization & Energy.
[6] 4E EDNA. (2021). Total Energy Model V2.0 for Connected Devices.
[7] 4E EDNA. (2019). Total Energy Model for Connected Devices.
[8] JRC135926_01-Energy Consumption in Data Centres and Broadband communication networks in the EU (Kamiya & Bertoldi, 2024)
[9] Kamiya, G. (2020a). Factcheck: What is the carbon footprint of streaming video on Netflix? Carbon Brief.
[10] Kamiya, G. (2020b). The carbon footprint of streaming video: Fact-checking the headlines. IEA.
[11] European Commission (2023), Commission adopts new implementing act to improve access to metering and consumption data
[12] Construction Briefing (2023), The countries that are amending building codes to limit construction carbon emissions
[13] European Commission (2023), EU Heat Pump Action Plan
[14] Climate Neutral Data Centre, Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact
[15] United Nations, 24/7 Carbon-free Energy Compact
[16] Carbon Trust, Carbon impact of video streaming
Relevance for EXIGENCE
Energy efficiency and carbon footprint of related ICT aspects are relevant for requirements and scenarios, energy metrics, energy measurements, orchestration, and energy optimisation.