A new study by Europe Economics has developed a new methodology for estimating the total electricity consumption of digital services relative to credible physical alternatives.
The report, commissioned by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, reveals how the expansion of digital services and the data centres that support them impacts energy consumption in the UK.
The research introduces a comparative approach that evaluates energy consumption across the entire delivery chain for both digital and physical services.
This includes the energy used by data centres, transmission networks, and end-user devices for digital services, as well as manufacturing, transportation, retail operations, office-based service delivery, and end-user devices for physical alternatives.
The study moves beyond traditional analyses that often isolate individual system components or focus solely on carbon emissions.
Three specific use cases examined in the report include video streaming versus Blu-ray discs, eBook reading versus printed books, and AI-powered translation versus human translation.
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By GlobalDataFor each scenario, energy consumption was calculated under low, medium, and high assumptions. The findings indicate that for all three use cases, the digital options are either on par with or significantly less energy-intensive than the physical alternatives.
The methodology employed by the study is designed to isolate the energy use attributable to the service itself, disregarding any increase in activity that might result from digitalisation, such as cost reductions or labour redeployment.
This approach aims to compare energy use in a hypothetical scenario where digitalisation does not contribute to economic growth.
