Takeaway from IBC 2024: M&E is misinformed on sustainability.
M&E as an industry is working hard at reducing carbon emissions during filming. This is fantastic, but I was shocked to learn that most M&E leaders don’t seem to be aware of the biggest threat to the environment—the data.
Members of the Digital Sustainability Alliance shared some important facts during IBC. Forbes reported that ninety percent of the world’s data was created in the last two years. Media and AI are the largest contributors here. In 2023 alone, 120 zettabytes were created. The amount of energy required to store 120ZB is equivalent to powering 61.8 million combustion powered automobiles.
And data is quickly becoming the largest contributor to carbon emissions. It has already surpassed the global airline industry by 2x and if IDC’s prediction of an annual growth rate of 23% comes to fruition, data in just a few years will take the number one spot over agriculture as the most harmful industry to our planet.
Moving to the cloud must be the answer, right?
These statistics are horrifying for the M&E and AI industries. So much so that I would have expected lots of focus on this topic at IBC. Instead, it was barely a footnote. A Storj survey came out during IBC that asked 500 M&E decision makers in the US and UK about their understanding of data and sustainability.
The desire exists to be more sustainable with data as 67.4% felt that they have a responsibility to ensure their media is stored in a way that’s environmentally responsible.
But here’s the disconnect. 70.6% believe that storing media in the cloud allows their organization to operate more sustainably. So is the sustainability plan for M&E just to move more data to the cloud? While large cloud providers are working hard to utilize renewable energy and minimize energy costs, this isn’t enough. I heard a great statement at IBC from an MTSS (Media Tech Sustainability Series) session, “People don’t realize that you can bike to work and be a vegan, but as soon as you stream a show that evening you’ve wiped out your carbon savings for the day.”
The cloud isn’t as sustainable as it could be.
According to studies from the NRDC and IBM, most servers operate at only 12-18% of capacity, implying that there is a huge reservoir of already manufactured and powered, but severely underutilized, storage capacity. Research from Yale University states that reuse of HDDs can save approximately 5 kg CO2 for every 6 months that a drive’s life is extended.
This same phenomenon is happening with GPUs for AI learning and inference. Cloud providers are buying up the latest and greatest NVIDIA GPUs, but are not able to keep them running effectively as AI models need to move to train where the data is. And when the next processor comes out, companies will of course buy them up and throw out the “old”, yet still working, hardware. Research from Tannu and Nair (2022) found that the manufacture of 1 TB of hard drive capacity results in a carbon footprint of about 20kg. It is critical to find ways to extend the life of your technology.
The other area where M&E needs to think differently about the cloud is reducing duplicates—both unintended ones as well as those for backup and recovery. The traditional cloud storage model for backups puts a 2-6x multiplier on data growth. That’s because it encourages storing data in multiple regions, which involves making copies and transferring that data between data centers. This is not helping the effort to reduce the carbon impact of data.
M&E needs to take action on reducing the carbon impact of media.
The good news that came out of the survey results is that 72.2% of M&E leaders would choose more sustainable file management and storage solutions even if they are more expensive, less performant, or less secure. The problem is that those same leaders believe that just moving their data to the cloud is the answer. It’s not.
So what can you do?
Reducing data duplicates is a must. There are some great technologies available for M&E that can help to do this (this is my favorite). And the storage cost savings of deduping your media will help cover this expense.
For more efficient and sustainable cloud services, the distributed cloud poses a big opportunity for M&E. Instead of inefficient data centers, the distributed cloud utilizes spare compute and storage capacity to deliver cloud services. The system was developed in a way that can bring server utilization from 18% to 90%. This means it can take advantage of 78% of existing capacity without increasing energy as the hard drives are already spinning.
The distributed cloud also enables use of hard drives until they stop working. Data centers have to replace hard drives before end of life to ensure there is no data loss. Distributed cloud storage has automated replication and file repair that eliminates concern of data loss from failed drives. This is another big win for sustainability as it means less manufacturing of hard drives and better use of the capacity that exists today.
Special effects and AI projects in M&E are big GPU users, which is a high demand on energy. Similar to distributed cloud storage, the distributed cloud also has globally available GPUs on-demand. Renting GPUs on-demand enables more efficient use of GPUs and getting the right GPUs for the job needed. This also reduces the hardware needed to process data and the energy needed to do the work.
Despite the survey which revealed an overwhelming majority of M&E leaders would pay more for sustainable solutions, even if they were slower or less secure, the distributed cloud is actually globally faster and more secure and durable by design. And saves M&E significant money in GPU use and data storage and egress.
Here are some resources for M&E to get more information on this important topic. And here’s hoping that it is a more visible theme at IBC next year, both in sessions and in the exhibitor hall.
- Learn about the Digital Sustainability Alliance.
- Learn more about the Media Tech Sustainability Series at both IBC and NAB events.
- [Technical report] Deep dive into the carbon costs of traditional cloud storage
- Learn about AdSignal for eliminating duplicate data, winner of multiple sustainability awards in M&E.
- Learn about the distributed cloud for more sustainable media storage.
Learn about a more sustainable model for on-demand GPUs.
