Working Groups

Measures, Terms, Language. A group that discusses - in depth -  the terms and measures we use to describe sustainability and impacts in the media industry. Recent publications include: ​'Watts'; Power off / Sleep / Standby'; Attribution vs Consequence​​.

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​Current work focuses on where power is measured (inside devices or from the grid) and looking into power factors.

This group manages Greening of Streaming's industry presence through events, speaking engagements, and educational content creation. It coordinates member representation at third-party conferences (promoting shared speaker responsibilities to minimize travel impact) and handles our own hosted events.

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Highlighted events can be found on our events page, and our first IBC meeting was covered on our blog.​

Our best practice working group is ultimately the 'aim' of Greening of Streaming.​

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As we eventually conclude our empirical work and present recommended ideas for the industry to use as guidance to improve their energy efficiency and sustainability, this working group will publish that in a series of best practice documents. 

For now however, we are some way from those empirical tests being complete, and so the group doubles as our internal governance and public affairs engagement team.

This engineering working group was established to examine streaming effects on distribution networks.

 

In the first two years, we developed methods to measure energy across Content Delivery Networks and tested them during major live events. The findings revealed that the assumption of energy being proportional to data traffic was incorrect.

 

Recently, we have focused on LESS Project 1, analyzing energy use in Multicast, Unicast, and Peer-to-Peer.

The Audio Working Group explores two key areas: studying energy-traffic relationships in audio distribution networks and investigating the efficiency of music library replication.

 

Their findings challenge traffic-energy proportionality assumptions and examine potential alternatives to current music library hosting practices, aiming to reduce infrastructure needs through innovative licensing and metadata management approaches.

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The Compression Working Group examines the vital role of audio and video encoding in streaming efficiency. The first 18 months focused on developing the LESS Accord discussions for establishing a broad systemic view of the entire end to end ecosystem. 

 

The group now concentrates on models for energy-profiling codecs and analysing the energy effects commensurate with changes to the encoding setup.

 

 

Energy has often been overlooked in evaluating the performance of the streaming industry,hindering the ability assess technologies from an energy efficiency perspective. 

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Working group 7 collaborates with standards bodies and industry associations to elevate energy efficiency as a primary consideration in streaming technology development. Working with InterSDO members, SVTA, 5GMAG, ACM, IETF, and others, we advocate for incorporating energy performance metrics into standards design criteria.​ Current work includes YANG Data Model for Energy Measurements in Streaming Devices (EYANG).​​

Numerous reports claim that consumers are responsible for 70-80% of energy used in streaming, attributing it to their devices. Greening of Streaming aims to test these claims, noting the lack of measurement for the remaining 20-30%, suggesting these assertions may be exaggerated.

 

Working group 8 has been actively conducting nine hackathons to create a real-time energy measurement model from encoders to home devices. This groundbreaking work will provide clarity on streaming energy consumption and reduce existing assumptions.

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At present, this Working Group is in the planning phase, with the objective of connecting industry and academia by providing empirical streaming energy data to research institutions.

 

Our aim is to address the climate impact of our industry; however, restricted access to industry data has resulted misunderstandings. As we produce energy data pertaining to our operations, we will share it with academics to improve their models and gain insights into our environmental impact.