The numbers are are also clearly fictive.
Driving a car for 4 miles uses about half a liter of fuel. A liter of gasoline contains about 9kwh of energy meaning, that you would use about 4.5 kwh per half hour of streaming. So the servers would have to draw about 9 KW to serve a single person? That would be like 10 gaming PCs running at full power to serve one person. Are they animating the shows in real time? No compression algorithm is that inefficient and no hard drive uses that much energy.
edit: also they could never be profitable like that. Let’s say you watch three hours per day. That would be 9kWx3hrsx30days=810kwh per month. Even if they only pay 5 cents a kWh that would still be over $40 per month just in electricity cost for one user.
I prefer to think that this post is unrealistically optimistic. If you drive an electric car and live in Quebec, this could very well be true. For reference, Quebec’s electric grid is just about 100% hydroelectric power, so your driving emissions would be close to 0.
I only looked at power consumption, not emissions.
If the electricity produced is emissions free than the emissions for both driving and streaming would be zero. So the original statement would be true, but meaningless.
But lets compare the energy consumption with an EV.
At 15kwh/100km(4.14mi/kWh) the EV would need
15kwh/100km*6,44km=0.966kwh for 4 miles.
That still leaves us with a power draw of 1.932KW.
That is closer to a realistic but I still don’t think the power consumption of streaming is that high.
“closer to realistic” - technically, but 1 kW is just so much power, I find it hard to imagine.
Say I was streaming from my own home server instead (about 20W, which could serve more then just one user), and over a gigabit Ethernet switch (also about 20W) which could serve a 4k streams to 50 users, but let’s say it’s just me). Then I would use 0.04 kW of electricity for streaming? Maybe I’m streaming from my gaming PC (0.1 kW idle) and have a large inefficient monitor (another 0.1kW). Then it sums up to 0.24 kW. We’re still not close to 1 kW and I’m out of ideas.
Granted, you’ll have many more switches because this is the internet. But those won’t serve just a single user so the power per user is much smaller too. And netflix servers will use more power, but they are also much better optimized for streaming than my home server, and not 90% idle, shared by many users.
And what would you do if you weren’t streaming? Would you turn off your gaming PC and monitor? If not, we can’t really fully count their consumption. Maybe… ah, I’ve got it! You’re boiling water for coffee at the same time. Yes, that would be 1kW. All the time, while streaming, one cup of water after the other non-stop.
Streaming also doesn’t emit microplastics all over the road via tyre wear. Streaming doesn’t emit brake dust. Streaming doesn’t require paving vast quantities of land in tarmac.
Trying the close to best scenario I can think of for the tweet to be correct
4 miles is about 6.5 km (rounding up)
Ford fiesta takes uses 6 litres over 100 km (tiny car also rounded down)
0.39l of gasoline is about 3.5 kwh (rounded down)
Well the next step would be apply loved trick:
Engine only pases around 1/5 of gasoline energy to useful energy, so that number can be used to make it more possible
We get 0.7kwh
Half an hour would give us 0.35kwh
Beffy Gaming PC uses around 400w (my gaming pc uses less) when doing light tasks, so that gives around 0.2kwh
Since I love drinking tea, that leaves me 0.15kwh for a whole litre of tea to chug down every 30 minutes
So with my average binge session I would have consume around 12 litres of tea for the tweet to be viable
Heh, just did the same but with CO2 emissions. And even considering those, the numbers were wildly off - about 2 days of constant streaming (nearly 48 hours!) equates a standard gas car’s 4 mile drive in emissions.
I can only assume they’re putting in layers. It’s not just Netflix, it’s also the cost of your internet, of running your TV, of your AC while at home, of your lights, etc… maybe even the footprint of your food. Maybe the cost of any AI upscaling or framerate generation, if Netflix does that.
They may have looked at everything you might use in that 30 min, then compared it to the rate at an arbitrary car’s fuel efficiency. Technically true statistics are very easy to deceive people with, especially if most people don’t know how to read them.
Assuming ofc, they didn’t just make the shit up, too.
Dont forget the energy used to extract and transport the fossil fuels. Its purposely never included in the consumer guilt propaganda from the fossil fuel lobby.
Sometimes it takes 20-50% of the energy contained in the fuel to get it to you.
The numbers are are also clearly fictive. Driving a car for 4 miles uses about half a liter of fuel. A liter of gasoline contains about 9kwh of energy meaning, that you would use about 4.5 kwh per half hour of streaming. So the servers would have to draw about 9 KW to serve a single person? That would be like 10 gaming PCs running at full power to serve one person. Are they animating the shows in real time? No compression algorithm is that inefficient and no hard drive uses that much energy.
edit: also they could never be profitable like that. Let’s say you watch three hours per day. That would be 9kWx3hrsx30days=810kwh per month. Even if they only pay 5 cents a kWh that would still be over $40 per month just in electricity cost for one user.
Thanks for doing the math. I’m not gonna check it, you seem trustworthy enough.
I checked them Adolf, the numbers are accurate.
o7 doing the lord’s work in the comments
I like to verify so I asked a LLM, it confirmed the math but also determined he is a sentient banana.
He shows his working though:
That alone is enough evidence to prove it was a lie.
I prefer to think that this post is unrealistically optimistic. If you drive an electric car and live in Quebec, this could very well be true. For reference, Quebec’s electric grid is just about 100% hydroelectric power, so your driving emissions would be close to 0.
I only looked at power consumption, not emissions. If the electricity produced is emissions free than the emissions for both driving and streaming would be zero. So the original statement would be true, but meaningless. But lets compare the energy consumption with an EV. At 15kwh/100km(4.14mi/kWh) the EV would need 15kwh/100km*6,44km=0.966kwh for 4 miles. That still leaves us with a power draw of 1.932KW. That is closer to a realistic but I still don’t think the power consumption of streaming is that high.
“closer to realistic” - technically, but 1 kW is just so much power, I find it hard to imagine.
Say I was streaming from my own home server instead (about 20W, which could serve more then just one user), and over a gigabit Ethernet switch (also about 20W) which could serve a 4k streams to 50 users, but let’s say it’s just me). Then I would use 0.04 kW of electricity for streaming? Maybe I’m streaming from my gaming PC (0.1 kW idle) and have a large inefficient monitor (another 0.1kW). Then it sums up to 0.24 kW. We’re still not close to 1 kW and I’m out of ideas.
Granted, you’ll have many more switches because this is the internet. But those won’t serve just a single user so the power per user is much smaller too. And netflix servers will use more power, but they are also much better optimized for streaming than my home server, and not 90% idle, shared by many users.
And what would you do if you weren’t streaming? Would you turn off your gaming PC and monitor? If not, we can’t really fully count their consumption. Maybe… ah, I’ve got it! You’re boiling water for coffee at the same time. Yes, that would be 1kW. All the time, while streaming, one cup of water after the other non-stop.
Streaming also doesn’t emit microplastics all over the road via tyre wear. Streaming doesn’t emit brake dust. Streaming doesn’t require paving vast quantities of land in tarmac.
Trying the close to best scenario I can think of for the tweet to be correct
4 miles is about 6.5 km (rounding up)
Ford fiesta takes uses 6 litres over 100 km (tiny car also rounded down)
0.39l of gasoline is about 3.5 kwh (rounded down)
Well the next step would be apply loved trick: Engine only pases around 1/5 of gasoline energy to useful energy, so that number can be used to make it more possible We get 0.7kwh
Half an hour would give us 0.35kwh
Beffy Gaming PC uses around 400w (my gaming pc uses less) when doing light tasks, so that gives around 0.2kwh
Since I love drinking tea, that leaves me 0.15kwh for a whole litre of tea to chug down every 30 minutes
So with my average binge session I would have consume around 12 litres of tea for the tweet to be viable
Heh, just did the same but with CO2 emissions. And even considering those, the numbers were wildly off - about 2 days of constant streaming (nearly 48 hours!) equates a standard gas car’s 4 mile drive in emissions.
This person maths.
total mathhead
probably has a math lab
I can only assume they’re putting in layers. It’s not just Netflix, it’s also the cost of your internet, of running your TV, of your AC while at home, of your lights, etc… maybe even the footprint of your food. Maybe the cost of any AI upscaling or framerate generation, if Netflix does that.
They may have looked at everything you might use in that 30 min, then compared it to the rate at an arbitrary car’s fuel efficiency. Technically true statistics are very easy to deceive people with, especially if most people don’t know how to read them.
Assuming ofc, they didn’t just make the shit up, too.
Excellent calculations!
Dont forget the energy used to extract and transport the fossil fuels. Its purposely never included in the consumer guilt propaganda from the fossil fuel lobby.
Sometimes it takes 20-50% of the energy contained in the fuel to get it to you.
I suppose you could also include a sliver of the cost of the show’s production.