Estimating the greenhouse gas emissions of daily internet traffic of end-users in the Netherlands

This research aims to facilitate the adoption of digital sobriety as a principle of action by providing a comparative analysis of how different types of daily internet traffic contribute to the digital emissions of end users according to the Sustainable Web Design (SWD) model. This study uses a series of internet traffic measurements of different internet services to characterize different categories of digital traffic. The SWD model divides the digital ecosystem into three key segments: data centers, networks, and user devices. The results indicate that video streaming is the most significant contributor to emissions, followed by browsing social networks. Gaming and audio streaming exhibited the lowest emissions, with video streaming producing approximately 15 times the gCO2eq of gaming. Instagram exhibited a higher data consumption than several video streaming services. The results further demonstrate that data consumption is the predominant determinant of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within the framework of the Sustainable Web Design (SWD) model. This is attributed to the minimal impact of the carbon intensity of the network and datacenters, which is overshadowed by the substantial carbon intensity associated with end-user devices and embodied emissions.