Comment by hurfdurf

Happy to provide. I will say that literally all these sources are already available in this HN thread, but its hard to find and many of the comments are down voted. So here you go:

This link has a great overview of why generative AI is not really a big deal in environmental terms: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa...

GenAI is dramatically lower impact on the environment than, say, streaming video is. But you don't see anywhere near the level of environmental vitriol for streaming video as for AI, which is much less costly.

The European average is 56 grams of CO2 emissions per hour of video streaming. For comparison: 100 meters to drive causes 22 grams of CO2.

https://www.ndc-garbe.com/data-center-how-much-energy-does-a...

80 percent of the electricity consumption on the Internet is caused by streaming services

Telekom needs the equivalent of 91 watts for a gigabyte of data transmission.

An hour of video streaming needs more than three times more energy than a HD stream in 4K quality, according to the Borderstep Institute. On a 65-inch TV, it causes 610 grams of CO2 per hour.

https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/it-medien/netflix-d...

Here is another helpful link with calculations going over similar things: https://nationalcentreforai.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2025/05/02/ar...