The Challenging Task of Estimating the Carbon Footprint of Digital Services

Abstract While hardware becomes more energy-efficient, the growing use of digital services results in increasing energy consumption for the information and communications technology (ICT) sector. This increase also raises concerns about the carbon footprint of producing, hosting and consuming digital services. Furthermore, digital services such as social media platforms and streaming services rely on compute- and data-intensive content formats, ranging from high-resolution media to the increasing use of generative artificial intelligence, which further contribute to the growth of carbon emissions from such services. In this chapter, the authors describe the main components that cause carbon emissions when providing digital services, namely, end-user devices, communication networks and data centres. Next, the authors analyse the carbon emissions reported by six major platforms that provide such services. To conclude, the authors highlight the main challenges in estimating the carbon emissions of digital services due to the complexity of the ecosystem, lack of information and lack of enforced standards and accountability obligations. The transition towards more sustainable digital platforms needs to involve developers, engineers, service providers, hosting platforms as well as consumers.