[nanidin]

The source for power per GB links to a paper published in 2012 [0] that describes how they arrived at 5.12kWh per GB. Maybe things have gotten more efficient in the last decade?

Note that the power figure includes all of the networking equipment between your desktop and the server, and the infrastructure required to run it like cooling equipment. Also note that watching a video at 2x speed may result in the server sending less data than watching a video at 1x speed.

[0] https://www.emergeinteractive.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02...

[jonas21]

I wouldn't put too much weight into that number. Studies of energy usage for data transfer vary by over 5 orders of magnitude depending on their assumptions. This paper [1], which is an analysis of 14 different studies, came up with 0.06 kWh/GB in 2015, with energy usage halving every 2 years. Assuming the trend continued, that would put it at less than 0.01 kWh/GB today.

The claim about CO2 emissions for a Google search was also contested at the time and later retracted by the original source [2][3]. Unfortunately, once on the internet, these things just keep getting repeated.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2009/01/12/revealed-the-times-made-up...

[3] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-sear...

[himinlomax]

> The source for power per GB links to a paper published in 2012 [0] that describes how they arrived at 5.12kWh per GB

Even for 2012, that number seems utterly implausible.

[jcims]

They are just dividing total consumption of data by total consumption of energy. While I would imagine both have risen substantially, I would imagine that consumption of data has risen by some multiple of consumption of energy.

[Buge]

>Also note that watching a video at 2x speed may result in the server sending less data than watching a video at 1x speed.

That's an interesting point, but I don't think that's the case for Youtube.