Category: Digital sobriety

However, all these games, albeit virtual, are run on physical hardware, and therefore consume energy. This article presents and compares the energy consumption of different video games and their parameters. To find out how much energy these uses actually consume, we have chosen to evaluate the following video games: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Total War Warhammer III, Borderlands 3, Anno 1800 and War Thunder.

We have previously carried out a study on mobile games.

Selection and methodology

These video games were selected because they offer a benchmark. Using these benchmarks as measurement subjects ensures the replicability of our experimental protocol, while eliminating the human factor from the results.

A benchmark is a feature offered by the game that allows you to measure the performance of a system (entire PC), or one of its components (CPU, GPU, memory, etc.) according to a given scenario and selected parameters.

We’ve also taken care to represent several types of game mode, such as RPG (role-playing game), strategy or simulation.

We measured these video games on a PC with the following configuration:

• Processor: i7 6700 
• Memory: 32 Go RAM DDR4 
• Graphics card: RTX 3060 12Go 

This equipment was supplied to us by OPP!, a company offering PC and Mac repair and maintenance services, as well as individual component sales.

The screen used is an LG E2441 with the following specifications:

• Screen technology : LED 
• Screen Size : 24” 
• Resolution : 1920×1080 

We collected energy metrics using a measurement module connected to our Greenspector Studio software, plugged directly into the PC and monitor power supplies and connected to the mains socket.

Benchmarks were carried out in 2 different graphics configurations:

• A configuration with maximum settings for the graphics offered by the game
• A configuration with minimal settings for the graphics offered by the game

6 iterations were performed on each scenario to ensure reliable results.

Benchmarks last between 80 and 240 seconds. These variations do not affect the results presented.

Graphic evolution impacts power

Modern games incorporate higher-quality graphics with ultra-detailed textures, advanced visual effects such as dynamic lighting, real-time shadows and sophisticated particle effects. This graphical complexity requires considerable rendering and graphics processing capabilities.

Gamers are also increasingly opting for high display resolutions for an optimal visual experience. This puts extra pressure on the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to render detailed images at ultra-high resolutions.

These GPUs have increasing energy consumption with each new generation, as shown below for NVDIA:

Evolution of minimum system power and maximum GPU power by GPU release date

Developers exploit advanced rendering techniques such as ray tracing to realistically simulate the behavior of light in virtual environments. Although these techniques offer an unprecedented level of realism, they are computationally intensive and require high-end GPUs.

Consumption differences depending on settings

Measurements of average PC power on the lowest and highest graphics configurations for each game show a wide disparity between them.

Total PC power at minimum or maximum setting

Switching from the maximum settings to the lowest settings offered by each game results in a measured power reduction of 45% on average. In the case of Borderlands 3, a power gain of 72% can even be observed.

In Anno 1800, the benchmark is a panoramic aerial view of the game’s map. This sequence highlights details of the game world, such as landscapes, iconic buildings and animations of everyday life.

Below are graphs of one iteration measured with maximum parameterization and another iteration with minimum parameterization. The benchmark sweeps over the city from its zoomed-in aerial viewpoint at the start, then the same trajectory is repeated 8 times with increasingly higher viewpoints, which explains the 8 peaks on the graph.

Here, we can easily see the significant difference between the 2 parameter levels. On the two different settings, we can see first of all that the further the camera is from the city, the more the power is reduced, given the increasingly short time of the scenario.

What’s more, when the game is set to maximum, power consumption is at its peak for almost the entire duration of the scenario, whereas measurements taken with the lowest setting show lower and shorter power peaks.

Anno 1800 benchmark power consumption with maximum settings

Anno 1800 benchmark power consumption with minimum settings

A Statista survey conducted in December 2023 revealed that 22% of US adults aged 18 to 29 spent six to ten hours a week playing video games. Overall, respondents in this age group were also more likely than others to be avid gamers, as a total of 8% played video games for more than 20 hours a week on average.

These figures enable us to evaluate overall energy consumption over the usage times of different types of players, in the case where the benchmark is representative of game consumption. Energy consumption has been projected with measurements taken on the minimum and maximum settings of each game.

The average consumption for one hour of play at minimum settings is 0.168 kWh, and 0.254 kWh at maximum settings. These results are higher than those of the European study on the environmental impact of digital services. The latter shows a consumption of 0.137 kWh for one hour of PC gaming at medium resolution.

Most gamers therefore consume between 1.5 kWh and 2.5 kWh per week, playing between 6 and 10 hours a week. For more involved gamers playing around 20h a week (2h40 a day), their PC and screen have a weekly consumption of 5 kWh. By the same token, a conventional refrigerator consumes an average of 3.29 kWh per week.

Evolution by release date

On maximum configurations, we note an evolution in measured power proportional to the release date of these games.

In this context, the maximum configurations of video games reflect this technological evolution. Game developers design their games to take advantage of the latest hardware advances, and this translates into increasingly high demands on components. As a result, to take full advantage of graphics performance and game fluidity, gamers often have to invest in state-of-the-art hardware.

These complex, detailed graphics require real-time rendering, which often relies on the CPU to perform calculations related to physics, artificial intelligence of non-player characters, collision management and other aspects of gameplay.

This is what a technical director of the Total War game explains in an interview with Intel:

“We model thousands of soldiers with a high level of detail applied to each in terms of animations, interactions, pathfinding decisions, etc.”

In video games, pathfinding consists in figuring out how to move a character from point A to point B, taking into account the environment: obstacles, other characters, length of paths, etc.

What’s more, the processor is often juggling numerous tasks simultaneously, depending on what’s displayed on the screen. “Take a scene where two huge fronts with thousands of soldiers are smashing into each other, and you’ve zoomed in quite close,” explains the game’s technical director. “In this situation, the processor is divided mainly between entity agent-based combat, collision mechanisms and building matrix stacks to draw all the entities.”

In other words, the processor must simultaneously manage the presence and interactions of thousands of NPCs (non-player characters).

What’s more, the more advanced the graphics, the greater the demand on the GPU to process data and instructions efficiently, which can lead to bottlenecks and slowdowns if the processor isn’t powerful enough.

In the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla game, when the settings are at their lowest, the graphics card is called upon for 46% on average. Conversely, at maximum setting, with water reflections activated or cloud quality at maximum, the graphics card is used at 99% during the benchmark.

Optimization vs. graphic quality

We’ve just seen that setting a game to its maximum setting involves high energy consumption. But are the visual effects enhanced? Are all settings relevant to the gaming experience, depending on the PC configuration?

An interesting indicator to answer these questions is the number of frames per second (FPS), as it is often used as an indicator of a game’s fluidity: the higher the FPS, the more fluid and responsive the game appears.

FPS (Frame Per Second) indicates the number of individual images (or “frames”) displayed on the screen each second.

The more complex an image is to generate and display, the slower the processor and graphics card can display it. So, when the settings exceed the capabilities of the PC configuration, the visual effect for the player is not necessarily enhanced.

What’s more, gameplay can be impacted by the bottleneck phenomenon.

A bottleneck is a phenomenon produced by a hardware or software component with limited performance compared to other, more powerful components. This means that one part of the system is operating at maximum capacity, while other parts can’t keep up, resulting in a drop in overall performance.

By correctly balancing the hardware configuration and adjusting graphics settings accordingly, gamers can minimize the risk of slowdowns and jerks, delivering a more enjoyable and immersive gaming experience.

Here are some differences from benchmarks set to their maximum gaming parameters and then to their minimum:

Implications for materials and environmental impact

The constant evolution of video games towards ever more immersive and realistic experiences has significant implications for the hardware used. Game developers are seeking to fully exploit the graphics and processing capabilities of new technologies, which translates into higher hardware requirements.

In France, 2020 will see the sale of 2.3 million consoles, 27.5 million complete games (console + PC / physical + dematerialized) and almost 7 million accessories (console + PC). With growth of 10%, the console ecosystem represents 51% of the total video game market, while PC gaming is up 9%. (Source: Sell)

Gamers are looking to stay at the cutting edge of technology to take full advantage of the latest releases. Beyond the financial stakes this may represent, this quest for hardware performance is also very critical from an environmental point of view.

As we’ve seen, all the components in a configuration need to be at roughly the same level of performance for an optimized gaming experience. If the gamer has a high-performance graphics card but a lower-resolution screen, or a less powerful processor or motherboard, the gaming experience will not necessarily be enhanced or even altered. So, from an optimization point of view, it’s not so much a matter of buying the latest components to improve performance as it is of optimizing game parameters according to your hardware configuration. On the one hand, this extends their life expectancy through reduced stress, but it also improves the gaming experience for users.

Over-solicitation causes components such as the graphics card or processor to heat up to high temperatures due to the amount of calculations they handle, and damages their transistors and chips, thus shortening their lifespan.

According to HP, the lifespan of an average desktop PC is between 2 and 3 years, and that of a gamer PC between 3 and 5 years.

We have no information about the environmental impact of gamer PC manufacturing, but the frequency of release of the latest generation of products, which pushes gamers to renew their PC configuration every year, considerably increases the impact of this industry.

It’s worth noting that game consoles also have a significant carbon footprint.

Climate and sustainability researcher Ben Abraham analyzes the PlayStation 4’s central processing unit using mass spectrometry, revealing the presence of atomic components such as titanium, whose extraction, refining and manufacture contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

This observation underlines the challenge of making the production of these devices sustainable, with decades needed to achieve this goal.

The importance of measurement

Video game publishers play a crucial role in reducing the industry’s environmental footprint. To do so, it is imperative to take energy consumption into account throughout the game development process.

First and foremost, measuring energy consumption enables game publishers to understand the environmental impact of their products. This includes not only the direct energy consumption of the devices on which the games are run, but also the carbon footprint associated with game servers, updates and downloads.

Secondly, this awareness enables game developers to design game mechanics and graphics that optimize energy efficiency. For example, by minimizing complex visual effects that require high computing power, games can reduce their energy consumption while still offering an immersive gaming experience.

The subject of the environmental footprint of video games is increasingly being taken on board by publishers, which is encouraging. Initiatives such as Ukie’s Green Games Guide and Ecran d’après offer practical advice and best practices for reducing the environmental impact of game design and development. Similarly, tools such as Microsoft’s Xbox Sustainability Toolkit or Jyros, the environmental impact measurement tool dedicated to the video game industry in France, provide developers with concrete ways of assessing and improving the sustainability of their games.

However, it is important to generalize these practices and integrate them more systematically throughout the industry. Too often, the environmental aspect is relegated to the background, while the emphasis is placed on the performance and aesthetics of games. It is therefore essential that publishers take greater account of the environmental implications of their design and development decisions.

Study limits 

In the context of this study, it is important to recognize certain limitations that could affect the scope and representativeness of the results obtained:

1. Manufacturer/designer partnerships: It is possible that some video games have established partnerships with hardware manufacturers to optimize their performance on specific configurations. These agreements could distort benchmark results by favoring certain brands or models of components. These results may alter comparisons between games, but not comparisons between configurations within the same game.

2. Benchmark scenario not necessarily representative of game modes: Benchmark scenarios used to evaluate video game performance may not reflect actual gameplay conditions. For example, a benchmark may focus on specific game sequences that do not necessarily represent general gameplay. As a result, the results obtained may not be fully representative of the overall gaming experience.

3. No measurement of multiplayer or online play: This study focuses primarily on the performance of single-player games, and does not take into account aspects related to multiplayer or online play. Consequently, data exchanges between game servers and clients, as well as network performance, are not taken into account in the analysis. This could limit a complete understanding of hardware requirements for an optimal online gaming experience.

Conclusion  

In conclusion, this study highlights the growing impact of video games on computer hardware performance. With the constant evolution of graphics and functionality, modern games require increasingly powerful hardware configurations to deliver an optimal gaming experience. This raises important questions about the sustainability and energy efficiency of computer equipment, as well as consumer hardware choices. Ultimately, it is crucial for both publishers and gamers to strike a balance between video game performance and the sustainability of the technology industry to ensure a more sustainable future.

Maëva Rondeau

Maëva Rondeau has been a responsible digital consultant at Greenspector since November 2023. She joined the team after completing her end-of-study internship with us from April to September 2023.

What do printers, connected cars and airliners have in common?

In this article, we will mention a few stories of surprising computer attacks. This will enable us to question our choices when it comes to implementing new features. These misadventures all have a common cause: an increase in the attack surface.

The multiplication of access points is a risk factor

In recent years, we’ve all seen objects that communicate with the outside world appear in our living rooms. From connected voice assistants to smart thermostats, these objects provide more or less useful services. The business world is no exception to this rule. Whether as part of the Industry 4.0 vision, or simply to facilitate remote communication, these connected systems are playing an increasingly important role.

Unfortunately, some devices pose major risks. Combining a low level of security with a connection to a company’s internal network, connected objects are a goldmine for malicious individuals. And they don’t hold back.

In its article, 01net shows how a group of Russian hackers is attacking connected objects to target businesses: https://www.01net.com/actualites/un-groupe-de-hackers-russes-cible-les-objets-connectes-pour-s-attaquer-aux-entreprises-1743886.html

What’s more, these connected objects often have access to private data. Imagine someone turning on your webcam remotely, or accessing the microphone on your soup mixer. Worse still, imagine a malicious individual taking control of a child’s toy and using it to contact him or her: https://www.france24.com/fr/20170228-hackers-ont-pirate-peluches-connectees-fait-fuiter-messages-denfants-a-leurs-parents

The proliferation of these objects poses a real social problem that we cannot ignore.

From an environmental point of view, the distribution of these systems also has significant impacts. From mineral extraction to distribution, the production of IT systems generates significant CO2 emissions, not to mention other impacts such as soil pollution and the erosion of biodiversity.

For all these reasons, the purchase of a new connected device should not be taken lightly. The question is: do we really need it?

How can an ancillary feature turn into a Trojan horse?

New connected objects aren’t the only systems that can be attacked: existing software can be as well.

Nor is it just a question of resources. Aviation, one of the world’s most financially powerful industries, which has invested considerable resources in security, has also been the victim of criminal acts.

In this article, we won’t be discussing the impacts of flying, but rather the specific subject of in-flight entertainment.

The many films and series available bring undeniable benefits for users: boredom reduction, keeping children occupied, forgetting about stress (and the fact that you’re in an aircraft that burns thousands of liters of fuel per hour) …

Nevertheless, the screen is not a system totally isolated from the rest of the world. For example, cutting video during a staff call necessarily implies communication between the box and at least part of the rest of the device.

And this link can be used to support an attack.

Chris Roberts, a cybersecurity specialist, has demonstrated this by successfully modifying the power of a reactor using the entertainment system: https://www.01net.com/actualites/un-hacker-aurait-pris-le-controle-d-un-avion-en-vol-grace-a-son-systeme-de-divertissement-654810.html

In reality, it’s extremely difficult to totally isolate one system from another.

This story is just one example:

• Connected cars: https://securite.developpez.com/actu/334250/Une-faille-dans-les-voitures-Tesla-permet-aux-voleurs-d-avoir-leur-propre-cle-et-de-s-emparer-de-la-voiture-en-seulement-130-secondes-l-exploit-tire-parti-du-lecteur-de-carte-NFC-des-voitures-Tesla/

• Facebook ancillary functionality : https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/facebook-data-breach-what-is-view-as-feature-and-why-it-s-been-disabled-story-vpL6KmzapfYxZVwQBumNyI.html

This last attack is an interesting one. It illustrates the issue of a well-known developer philosophy: “Why do it? Because we can.”

Hackers have taken advantage of a security flaw in a service of Meta’s flagship social network. The functionality in question allowed users to see how their profile was viewed by another user. Admittedly, this is of interest to the user, but it is not essential to the smooth operation of the social network. On the other hand, the consequences of an attack are extremely damaging, both for users and for the company, whose image is tarnished.

When the group became aware of the flaw, they immediately removed the service. The question then arises: did users notice the disappearance of the functionality?

From a general point of view, we can list a few disadvantages of the multiplication of possibilities offered by a digital service:

• dispersion of resources that could have been allocated to securing key application or website services
• implementation of little-used functionalities that receive little attention from the development team and are therefore more vulnerable
• the need to reduce compatibility with older versions of Android or iOS. And consequently reduce the number of potential users
• increase the weight of an application due to the development of more code or embedded media. Increasing the application’s environmental impact.

Taking into account the associated risks, we must always ask ourselves: is the comfort it brings really worth the impact it causes?

It’s also worth remembering that cybersecurity is an integral part of digital sustainability. As a designer of digital services, it is therefore our duty to protect users. Implementing security mechanisms is an important part of this, but we also need to think globally, encompassing all functionalities.

Malicious individuals will try to get into every nook and cranny of your system. By increasing the number of functions, you are giving them new doors that they will be happy to open.

Finally, all these attacks show us that digital sufficiency is not only a useful tool in the context of the ecological transition, but is also of interest in the fight against cybercrime.

Conclusion 

In short, digital sufficiency is proving to be our unexpected ally in the daily battle for IT security. Before rushing off to buy the latest gadget or design a new feature, let’s ask ourselves the following 2 questions:

1. Is that useful ?

2. Is the risk worth the benefit?

In some cases, the answer is obviously yes. The seatbelt makes the car heavier and therefore increases fuel consumption, but it considerably reduces the number of deaths on the roads. The reduction in comfort was worth it.

In many cases, the answer is the opposite. Today’s cars can reach speeds well in excess of 150km/h. Yet it is forbidden to exceed 130km/h. This measure, taken in France in 1974 to combat the 1973 oil crisis, was the result of a balancing act between individual freedoms on the one hand, and the collective effort needed to counter the consequences of the oil crisis on the other. It wasn’t worth the risk.

This central consideration in any decision must be at the heart of a development team’s questioning.

Today, only the advantage part of a feature is highlighted. But that’s forgotten:

• User security
• The financial cost of a computer attack
• Damage to the image of the company that suffers a computer attack
• The environmental impact of this functionality
• Loss of compatibility with certain users
• And many more…

33 years after the introduction of compulsory rear seat belts, the question of discomfort versus safety is no longer an issue in the automotive world. It must also become a reflex for digital service design teams in the IT world.

Julien Gilbert

After working as a mobile application developer, Julien Gilbert became a digital sustainability consultant at Greenspector. A keen football fan, he is actively involved in promoting sustainable practices to ensure a sustainable future for sport.

In France, the accessibility of digital services has had a legislative framework for several years now (initiated by article 47 of the 2005-102 law of 11 February 2005 [FR] and specified in decree no. 2019-768 of 24 July 2019 [FR]). This is based primarily on the RGAA [FR] (Référentiel Général d’Amélioration de l’Accessibilité – General Accessibility Improvement Reference Framework). The eco-design of digital services, which has been discussed in France for over 15 years, has gained considerable momentum in recent years. However, the subject is still struggling to establish itself, or even to take precise shape within organisations. The legislative framework has been taking shape since 2021 and should enable the eco-design of digital services to take hold over the next few years. The aim of this article is to shed some light on the subject.

A quick reminder

ADEME (Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie) and ARCEP (Autorité de régulation des communications électroniques, des postes et de la distribution de la presse) are working together on the environmental impact of digital technology. Their work covers, in particular, the estimation of these impacts on a French scale, as well as best practices and prospects. This information can be found here: https://www.arcep.fr/nos-sujets/numerique-et-environnement.html [FR]

Ecodesign [FR] can be defined as an approach that integrates the reduction of environmental impacts right from the design stage of a digital service, with a global vision of the entire life cycle, via continuous improvement.

A digital service [FR] is a set of human, software and hardware resources needed to provide a service.

Consequently (but we’ll come back to this in a later article), talking about an eco-designed website can be perceived as a misuse of language. As part of an eco-design approach, we need to take an interest in all the site’s digital services (or at least a representative sample), through continuous improvement and by covering all the stages in the project’s lifecycle. All this goes much further than simply measuring a sample of pages on a site that is already online.

The laws

In France, there are currently 2 main laws: the AGEC law (Anti-Gaspillage pour une Économie Circulaire) and the REEN law (Réduction de l’Empreinte Environnementale du Numérique).

The AGEC law [FR] briefly addresses the subject, but this requirement does not yet seem to have been dealt with exhaustively. On this subject, see the Guide pratique pour des achats numériques écoresponsables from the Mission interministérielle Numérique Écoresponsable [FR].

Even if certain elements still need to be clarified, the REEN law [FR] goes further by mentioning (among other things) :

• The need to train engineering students in digital-related courses in the eco-design of digital services. But there is also a need to raise awareness of digital sobriety from an early age.
• The creation of an observatory on the environmental impact of digital technology, via ADEME (Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Énergie) and ARCEP (Autorité de régulation des communications électroniques, des postes et de la distribution de la presse).
• A general reference framework for the eco-design of digital services to set criteria for the sustainable design of websites, to be implemented from 2024. ARCEP has since confirmed that this benchmark will be based on the RGESN (Référentiel général d’écoconception de services numériques [FR]): https://www.arcep.fr/actualites/actualites-et-communiques/detail/n/environnement-091023.html [FR] A public consultation, launched in October 2023, aims to consolidate this benchmark and practices around it, with a view to wider adoption from early 2024.
• The fight against the various forms of obsolescence, as well as actions to promote re-use and recycling.
• Reduce the impact of data centres (in particular by monitoring the efficiency of energy and water consumption) and networks. The decree is currently being published [FR].
• Require municipalities and groups of municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants to draw up and implement a Responsible Digital Strategy by 2025. This strategy must include elements relating to the eco-design of digital services. A number of guides have been published to help establish this strategy, including this one: https://www.interconnectes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/web-Guide-methodologique_V8.pdf [FR]

All of this is accompanied by the establishment of the HCNE (High Committee for Eco-responsible Digitisation), various roadmaps and an eco-responsible digital acceleration strategy. All this is detailed on this page: https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/numerique-responsable [FR]

What’s next?

Once all these elements have been defined, the question arises of what remains to be done.

In 2024, the REEN law will require public websites to be designed in a sustainable way. By 2025, local authorities with more than 50,000 inhabitants will have to have integrated this dimension into their Responsible Digital Strategy.

Greenspector has been involved in the eco-design of digital services for several years. This evolution in the legislative framework coincides with our involvement in projects at an increasingly early stage, sometimes even from the expression of need. This inevitably requires changes in practices, including the introduction of ideation workshops that take into account the environmental footprint of a service. More and more often, the RGESN is used as a reference to guide the approach throughout the project. This reference framework is ideal for this type of support, but it also provides a basis for managing eco-design as a continuous improvement process.

This way of rethinking support for the eco-design of digital services also makes it possible to move towards greater impact reduction levers and to involve more types of profiles in the projects supported.

As the process begins with public institutions, it is to be hoped that companies will follow suit. In fact, some have already begun the process of complying with the RGESN. Not just in anticipation of a possible change in the legislative framework affecting them, but also because these standards provide a long-awaited framework for the eco-design approach.

To support all these efforts, financial aid is available for both companies [FR] and local authorities [FR].

On all the issues raised here, France has made great strides. Now it’s up to other countries to follow suit. In September, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) published its WSG [FR] (Web Sustainability Guidelines). They are now out for public consultation with a view to making further progress on the subject and perhaps eventually establishing web standards. They are also accompanied by discussions on the best way to introduce levers directly at institutional level. In Europe, some countries, notably Belgium and Switzerland, are federating around structures similar to the INR. It is to be hoped that the RGESN and other elements currently in place in France can be adapted to other countries.

Laurent DEVERNAY

After working for more than 15 years in web development, Laurent Devernay became a technical consultant in responsible digital technology at Greenspector. When he is not coaching organizations on the eco-design of their digital services, he teaches courses on digital sobriety technologies.

ldevernay.github.io/

Just ten years ago, the subject of the environmental impact of digital technology was confined to a handful of specialists. Over the past few years, however, the subject has gained considerable momentum, particularly in France but also internationally. While some people are (rightly) concerned about the preponderance of discourse around net zero and carbon neutrality, this trend is merely a symptom of a biased approach to the subject.

Reducing a global crisis to a technical problem

The climate emergency is a key issue that has gained enormous momentum in recent years. The digital sector has not been spared, and studies and tools have made many people aware of the issue. The problem is alarming, but also complex, which is why some aspects have been lost along the way in favor of broader awareness.

In the case of digital services, it is understood that an LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is an excellent way of estimating environmental impacts, but the process can prove cumbersome and costly. Defining the scope, selecting the indicators, collecting and analyzing the data. The complexity is all the more difficult to take into account when you want results quickly and, preferably, easily communicated. So, to gain in efficiency, some choose to measure only part of their digital services, thanks to easy-to-use tools. In just a few clicks, you have your answer and can share it.

Sound familiar? It’s called technological solutionism, as expounded by Evgeny Morozov in his seminal work “To save everything, click here“.

This is also why solutions are being developed that analyze code to suggest ways of improving it to reduce its environmental impact. Some are even beginning to rely on artificial intelligence for this purpose.

It’s also what prompts some to optimize where their code will be executed, to move towards a location where energy has less impact from an environmental point of view (taking into account, of course, only greenhouse gas emissions). And what can’t be avoided or reduced can always be compensated for.

In the end, it’s all very human. Faced with a complex and urgent problem, we try to simplify and adopt or find a quick solution. That’s not a bad thing, but we can’t stop there. All the more so when some people rely on claims of “net zero” and carbon neutrality to artificially draw a finish line that can be reached via clever calculations and investments, whereas the problem is systemic by nature.

The risk here is of optimizing one indicator while degrading others that we didn’t have in mind (for example, requesting a data center presented as carbon neutral without taking into account its impact on water resources). As a result, we’re increasingly asking ourselves whether a sober site is necessarily ugly, without realizing that it’s not always accessible. Or really sober, for that matter.

Reminder

The environmental impacts of digital technology are not limited to greenhouse gas emissions. As we see in LCA, the indicators to be taken into account are much more numerous and varied. Little by little, we are also having to take into account the criticality of certain mineral resources, as well as that of water (as we saw recently with ChatGPT and Google’s data centers).

The environmental impact of digital services doesn’t just come from the code. In fact, according to GreenIT.fr, only around 20% of the impact comes from the code. Which makes perfect sense. Through code, we seek to improve efficiency (doing better with less). The real levers for reduction are to be found in the other stages of the lifecycle, notably design, strategy and content production. In this way, we can move towards sobriety for good.

Finally, the impacts of digital technology are not only environmental, and this is the heart of Responsible Digital. We need to keep in mind the impact on the individual (via accessibility, security, personal data management, the attention economy, ethics and inclusion). So, managing the climate emergency can only be done with an intersectional approach.

But how?

The technical approach is not necessarily bad in itself. It’s a good thing to have effective solutions to improve the efficiency of digital services (as long as we keep in mind the possible side-effects). Sometimes, it’s even an excellent starting point for taking initial action, initiating a continuous improvement process and getting to grips with the subject.

On the other hand, it’s essential to go further. This is what we see today in movements around Sustainable UX, responsible communication and even responsible digital marketing, for example. We are also seeing the emergence of resources and books on “green service design” and systemic design.

This is also the reason why the GreenIT collective’s 115 best practices have evolved over time, and why other, more comprehensive reference frameworks have emerged, such as RGESN and GR491.

Beyond this, it is also important to ask ourselves more general questions about what we eco-design, and how the services we create can induce more environmentally-friendly behavior.

Conclusion

As we’ve already seen when examining the offerings of web hosting providers, the reality of the environmental impact of digital technology is more complex than it might seem. The problem won’t be solved with a single click, and perhaps that’s just as well. In fact, it’s an opportunity to rethink digital technology, the way we use it and the way we think about it. These constraints may well give rise to a digital world that is more respectful not only of the environment, but also of individuals.

Laurent DEVERNAY

After working for more than 15 years in web development, Laurent Devernay became a technical consultant in responsible digital technology at Greenspector. When he is not coaching organizations on the eco-design of their digital services, he teaches courses on digital sobriety technologies.

ldevernay.github.io/

Introduction 

As not all these networks work in the same way, we chose to remeasure a use case common to all of them, namely, browsing and reading a news feed from the 10 most popular social network mobile applications in France.

 
Méthodology

Choice of social networks studied

The 10 most popular social networking applications among the French are: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter and Youtube. We have used We are social statistics from January 2023 to project environmental impacts.

Given the use case selected, we’ve focused on social networks with a news feed, which excludes messaging applications such as Whatsapp, Messenger, Imessage, Skype, Discord and Telegram. You’ll probably find them in a future article 😉

User path definition

We evolved the user journey by creating a news feed scrolling scenario with the following steps

• Step 1: launch the application
• Step 2: read news feed without scrolling (30 sec)
• Step 3: News feed scrolls with pauses.
• Step 4: application background (30 sec)

This path consists of a 2-second scroll followed by a 1-second read (pause), all repeated and weighted over a 1-minute duration.

Regarding Snapchat, its operation forced us to consider a click and not a scroll scenario, but not calling into question the pause and content scroll times. What’s more, the chosen news feed is the stories page, which is not the application’s home page. In order to have comparable scenarios, the step of accessing the stories page was not measured on this path and therefore not included in the impact generated.

The pauses in scrolling through the news feed simulate the most realistic reading behavior possible.
This path does not transcribe the most frequent uses on these platforms (reading a post or associated rich content, a video, reaction, generated exchange, ….) but it does give us an indication of the level of sobriety of the applications.

For this study, data was measured using our Greenspector Test Runner solution, which enables automated tests to be carried out locally on smartphones.

We measured resource consumption (energy, memory, data) and response times. These data were then used to calculate the environmental impact of the applications.

Please note that the methodology used in this study compares only the scrolling of the most common news feeds. This means that the comparison is not necessarily equivalent, as some news feeds focus on video scrolling and others on multimedia posts (text, image, video, animated gif, etc.).

Measurement context

• Samsung 10, Android 10
• Network: Wi-Fi
• Brightness: 50%.
• Tests carried out over at least 3 iterations to ensure reliability of results

Assumptions used for environmental projections

• User location: 100% France
• Server localization: 100% worldwide (in the absence of information for each application)
• Devices used: 100% smartphone
• Server type: 100% complex

The environmental footprint depends on the location of application servers, their type, the location of users and the type of devices they use. We have decided to study the use of applications only on smartphones and on the share of French users.

Top and flop apps in France according to results

The graph below ranks the various social networking applications according to the environmental footprint of the path we defined above.

The less sober app

Tiktok comes last in the ranking, but that’s no great surprise. In fact, the application is very energy-hungry, consuming 22.4 mAh at launch and exchanging a lot of data as it scrolls through the news feed. This enormous exchange is due in particular to the constantly running video launch and the many advertisements present on the application.

The application preloads a wide range of content, so if the user is offline, he or she can still access the videos. Tiktok loads around 5 MB of data for 30s after launch, equivalent in this test to 10 preloaded videos.

The most sober application

LinkedIn is the least impactful application according to our results. It exchanges a very low volume of data when the application loads, as well as when scrolling through the news feed. The fact that the social network is focused on sharing text-based posts with a low amount of photos and videos explains this score in particular. What’s more, LinkedIn consumes 13.9 mAh of energy, 15% less than the other applications on the panel.

 

Other applications preload less content, and often less volume. A preloaded video consumes more energy and generates more data exchanges than a preloaded text post.

One-year projection of the impact of the 2 applications most used by the French

According to the We Are Social annual report, the average time spent on social networks is 1h55 per day. When we project the environmental impact over one year for each application, the environmental impact represents 20 to 40 kg eqCO2 depending on the social network. This represents 185km by car for the least sober network.

According to Ademe’s Impact CO2 website, which offers an online converter, approximately 200g CO2eq = 1km. This includes direct emissions, vehicle construction (manufacture, maintenance and end-of-life) and the production and distribution of fuel and electricity. Infrastructure construction (roads, railways, airports, etc.) is not included in this calculation.

We have chosen to compare the 2 applications most used by the French, namely Facebook, which has around 38.1M users, and Instagram, which has around 30.5M users.

Facebook 

The report states that 52 million people in France are present on social networks. Facebook is the most popular social network among 16-64 year-olds (73.3%). If we multiply Facebook’s environmental impact by the number of French users present on this platform (approx. 38.1M), this represents more than 24 tonnes eqCO2/min (or the production of 773 smartphones/min). That’s almost 1M tonnes of eqCO2 per year!

Instagram 

Instagram is the 2nd most popular social network among 16-64 year-olds after Facebook. If we multiply Instagram’s environmental impact by the number of French users present on this platform (58.6%), this represents more than 26.5 tonnes eqCO2/min (or the production of 853 smartphones/min). That’s over 1.1M tonnes of eqCO2 per year!

We can see that despite a gap of almost 8 million users, Instagram has a greater carbon impact than Facebook.

It’s worth pointing out that the amount of time devoted to social networking varies according to the audience concerned. Some people spend less time on them, while others spend considerably more, sometimes up to 8 hours a day.

The table below projects the carbon impact in terms of uptime.

What about international projection?

With an average time spent on social networks of 2 hours and 31 minutes across all networks, we estimate the consumption of these applications worldwide.

Facebook has 2.958 billion users worldwide, making it once again the most popular network. The daily consumption of a user spending an average of 2h31 on this network would be around 95g eqCO2. For the almost 3 billion Facebook users who spend an average of 2h31 a day on this social network, the platform would have an environmental footprint of more than 281,000 tonnes eqCO2/day, or more than 102 million tonnes eqCO2 a year!

Internationally, Instagram has around 2 billion users. Per day, the consumption of a user spending 2h31 on Instagram would produce around 132g eqCO2. On the scale of 2 billion users, this would represent 262,000 tonnes eqCO2/day, or almost 96 million tonnes per year.

And what happens if we use a dark theme?

We carried out our measurements a second time with the applications in dark mode, so as to be able to compare the energy impacts generated.

The measurements were carried out on a Samsung S10, equipped with AMOLED technology, known for the fact that a dark pixel is actually a partially extinguished pixel, which explains why dark modes reduce power consumption. Conversely, when the screen uses LCD technology, color has no influence on consumption, which explains why dark mode is no more energy-efficient than light mode, see article here.

Nowadays, more and more phones are equipped with AMOLED screen technology, and it’s worth activating the dark mode to reduce power consumption and preserve battery discharge.

In this study, we noticed that only 8 of the 10 applications studied offered dark mode. Snapchat and Tiktok didn’t, so we excluded them from the measurements. As their interface is based on scrolling videos and photos only, only a few pages such as messaging would lower the energy consumption measurement.

Application	Energy consumed in light mode /1 min(mAh)	Energy consumed in dark mode /1 min(mAh)	Energy consumption reduction rate
Twitter	12,2	8,5	31%
LinkedIn	11,7	8,5	28%
Facebook	12,5	9,3	26%
twitch	10	7,5	25%
Pinterest	11,3	8,8	22%
Instagram	13,2	11,8	11%
YouTube	13,4	11,9	10%
Reddit	14,1	13,1	8%

It can be seen that activating the dark mode reduces the energy consumption measured on the battery.

We can see that when dark mode is activated on the application, energy consumption is reduced by an average of 20%, and the rate of battery discharge is therefore reduced by an average of 18%, relative to their equivalents in light mode.

On text-heavy applications such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, dark mode is more energy-efficient, as it inverts the colors of a block of text, turning it into fine white writing on a black background. On the other hand, images and videos will not have their colors inverted, so there will be little difference when displaying multimedia content.

Conclusion

In this study, we observe that the GHG impact is around twice as great between the most and least impacting platforms.

Applications with a lot of multimedia content consume a lot of energy and require a lot of data exchange over the network to display this content. Text-based content, on the other hand, is much easier to load and consumes much less energy.

In conclusion, although social networks facilitate the exchange and accessibility of information, they are not as totally virtual as we might think, and raise the question of our relationship to the consumption of these applications. Are we really using them to communicate and inform ourselves, or rather to feed on a barrage of information and content that is generally neither desired nor expected?

At a time when climate change is a matter of urgency, it’s time to examine our relationship with our screens and adopt eco-friendly gestures, such as reducing time spent online and activating dark mode on mobile applications.

If you’re an application publisher, you also have a role to play! Here are a few ways in which you can reduce your impact:

• Default to dark mode when downloading the application
• Avoid massive pre-loading of heavy content
• Avoid auto-starting videos or auto-re-launching at the end of videos

Sources  

For social network usage statistics :

https://wearesocial.com/fr/blog/2023/02/digital-report-france-2023-%f0%9f%87%ab%f0%9f%87%b7/

For equivalents in terms of carbon impact :

https://impactco2.fr/

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Yosr Ben Ammar

Yosr is a final-year Masters student and a digital responsibility consultant for Greenspector.

In recent years, the use of fonts on the web has exploded (both in terms of the number of existing fonts and the number of sites using them).

As usual, the Web Almanac is a mine of information, especially via the chapter dedicated to fonts. We learn that the two main suppliers of web fonts are Google and Font Awesome, the latter consisting in the provision of icons. Beyond the potential cost on performance and environmental impacts, some countries have already established that this could contravene the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Let’s see what good practices can reduce the impact of fonts on the web.

Existing reference systems

The fonts are mentioned in the UX/UI family of the RGESN (Référentiel Général d’écoconception de services numériques) :

• 4.10 – Does the digital service use mostly operating system fonts?

They are also found in GR491 (Responsible Digital Service Design Reference Guide):

• Do you limit the number of fonts loaded?
• Do you give preference to system fonts?
• Are the number of fonts and font variants called (fat, characters used in the project) limited?

Finally, the 115 web ecodesign best practices also mention them:

• Favouring standard fonts

Good practices

Specific cases

Case study

As part of the support Docaposte teams receive for their corporate site, fonts are often a separate project.

The fonts used here are two Google Fonts: Montserrat and Barlow. The site being already online, it is complicated to impose the use of standard fonts.

To avoid violating the GDPR and to improve site performance, fonts are hosted directly on Docaposte’s servers. In a second phase, a dedicated subdomain could be set up to eliminate the need for cookies.

The integration in the form of a variable font requires some additional adjustments, especially in the style sheets. In the meantime, it was decided to apply two best practices:

• Propose the files in woff2 format rather than woff
• The site being proposed only in French and English, a Subset was created keeping only the Latin alphabet.

Original requests

Requests after Subset and conversion to woff2

The woff2 format offers an average of 30% more compression than the woff format and even more than other formats like ttf.

This change in format, combined with Subset, reduced the total weight of the fonts from just over 400 kb to just under 90 kb, a reduction of about 78%.

To go further

• Best practices for fonts : overview of the different best practices related to fonts, mainly in order to improve the performance of a website
• Introduction to optimising web fonts: tips and tools for optimizing fonts
• Reduce web font size : different optimization strategies
• Wakamaifondue : a free online tool to analyze what is in a font file
• Font Subsetter: a free online tool to limit the number of characters in a font file.
• Unicode range subsetting : an approach of the Subset based directly on unicode in order to keep only the really used characters.
• Self-hosting explained (including Google Fonts) : how to host fonts yourself

Laurent DEVERNAY

After working for more than 15 years in web development, Laurent Devernay became a technical consultant in responsible digital technology at Greenspector. When he is not coaching organizations on the eco-design of their digital services, he teaches courses on digital sobriety technologies.

ldevernay.github.io/

At Greenspector, our mission is to help our customers reduce the environmental impact of their digital services. We work on this every day, but is it enough to offset our own impacts?

To this fundamental question, we must admit that we do not have a simple answer at this time. We will propose to our Mission Committee to work on this subject in order to go further. In the meantime, here is what we can share with you.

To verify that we are having a positive impact, we need to know our own impacts, and estimate the impacts that our clients are avoiding thanks to us. For this exercise, we will focus on the most easily assessable impact data: greenhouse gas emissions.

Our impacts

This is the “easy” part of the calculation. We have been doing our carbon footprint every year since 2019, using the excellent software from our friends at Toovalu. So we know our greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, they were 31 tCO2e.

Is this a lot? We can reduce this value to a monetary ratio commonly used in this type of approach: 31 tCO2e for 851 k€ of turnover in 2021, which represents 36.9 kgCO2e/k€ of turnover. By way of comparison, ADEME indicates an average value of 110 kgCO2e/k€ for the category “low material services”. We are therefore 66% below the sector average. This is good, but we can certainly do better.

Avoided impacts

This is where things get complicated. On the one hand, our activities are diverse (sales of licenses, audits of mobile applications or websites, help in choosing Android fleets, etc.). On the other hand, it is not so easy to know how much we have helped to avoid. We need to be able to measure “before” and “after” (which does not always happen) and ideally, between “before” and “after”, only our recommendations to reduce impacts should have been applied. However, if you develop applications or websites, you know that between two versions, it is rare that there are not multiple changes of all kinds.

Finally, there is a methodological question: let’s suppose an audit on a version 1.0, which leads to 30% less impact on a version 1.1. Can we consider that this 30% will be avoided ad vitam aeternam, in other words, can we consider that version 1.7, which will be released in 18 months, will have 30% less impact than 1.7 would have had if we had not intervened on version 1.0? For want of a better answer, we have chosen to consider that the avoided impacts apply for the next 12 months.

So we do not have the possibility of calculating avoided impacts on all our projects or for all our clients – which we regret. However, we can get an idea from a few cases for which this calculation was possible.

Let’s take three examples:

• The SNCF Connect mobile application (Android version): we were able to determine the impact avoided on the TER ticket reservation process: -18.9% or -10 tCO2e over one year.
• At the opposite extreme, the Orange Group’s Integrated Annual Report (IAR): the RAI 2021 website has a 55% lower impact than the RAI 2020, which for its audience – modest for this type of content – represents an avoidance of 0.024 tCO2e over one year.

Here we have 2 projects typical of our activity, extreme in their audiences, accumulating 10 tCO2e avoided, so an average of 5 tCO2e per project. However, in 2021 we worked on more than 70 application or website projects. By taking the average of these two projects, multiplied by 70 projects, we arrive at 356 tCO2e avoided. Another approach based on a categorisation of each service according to its intensity of use gives us 150 tCO2e. Let us retain this lowest value.

As a reminder, our own footprint that year was 31 tCO2e: even if our low value of 150t was still overestimated, it would be very surprising if it turned out to be less than 31t.

“And the third example?”, say those who follow

The third example is a lesser known service in our catalogue. This is our “Fleet Selection” offer, which consists, thanks to our laboratory measurements, of assisting our customers in choosing a smartphone for their business mobile fleet. The measurements and recommendations focus on autonomy criteria, of course, but also on the durability of the terminals (battery life, robustness, etc.) in order to check that they will be able to meet business needs for as long as possible.

In 2021, we helped a client choose the most sustainable device for a fleet of 35,000 smartphones and 5,000 tablets. Thanks to our measurements, he was able to ensure that he chose a model with an expected lifespan of 4 years instead of 3. The manufacturing impact of a smartphone is on average 54 kg CO2e, that of a tablet 108 kgCO2e (values extracted from the Greenspector impact model). Extending this fleet by one year before replacement therefore represents a saving of 810 tCO2e. It can be argued that we are not 100% responsible for this choice. If we attribute even 10% of these 810t to ourselves, this represents 81 tCO2e avoided – compared to the 31t we emit.

Conclusion

We don’t yet know how to quantify our positive impact precisely, and we may never know. But it is important for us to make sure that we do have a positive impact. This 2021 exercise has demonstrated that.

We will continue to work on this assessment of avoided impacts in order to arrive at more accurate results in the future. But even under conservative assumptions, we are confident that our actions are saving greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, it should be remembered that improving the sobriety of apps has other positive impacts, particularly on the social aspect by enabling people with old and/or low-end terminals to access these digital services that are often indispensable in daily life.

All this makes us proud and strengthens us to continue our mission.

Thomas CORVAISIER

Thomas CORVAISIER is the CEO of GREENSPECTOR. After getting his degree in Engineering he worked for over 15 years in IT consulting alongside major companies, focusing on testing and software quality. He then worked on CSR topics (carbon accounting, environmental management) and eventually mixed these skills into GreenIT expertness and cofounding Greenspector.