Digital technology and entertainment is a significant driver of electricity use globally, resulting in increased GHG emissions. Research has been conducted on electricity use associated with adigital services, but to date no complete study of television distribution has been conducted. Here we present the first assessment of electricity used for distribution and viewing of television over different distribution platforms terrestrial, satellite, cable and online streaming. We use a novel methodology that combines life cycle assessment techniques with models of the diversity of actual user behaviour, derived from detailed audience monitoring and online behaviour analytics data. This can be applied to assess overall electricity usage for a given media company's services and allows comparison of the electricity demanded per viewerhour of each distribution platform. We apply this to a representative national TV provider - the British Broadcasting Corporation – and show the mean estimate for BBC distribution/viewing electricity use in 2016 is 2171 GWh, resulting in emissions of 1.12 MtCO2e. We show that viewing over streaming, cable and satellite platforms used a mean of 0.17–0.18 KWh per device-hour (88–93 gCO2e) while terrestrial broadcast used a mean of 0.07 kWh (36 gCO2e). We identify home networking equipment and set-top boxes as key hotspots in the system, and show that though streaming is similar in impact to cable and satellite, this is because people use smaller devices to view – meaning the networking equipment in and beyond the home has a higher impact while the end device has a lower one.

数字技术和娱乐是全球电力使用的重要驱动因素，导致温室气体排放量增加。已经对与数字服务相关的电力使用进行了研究，但迄今为止还没有对电视分配进行完整的研究。在这里，我们首次对用于通过地面、卫星、有线和在线流媒体的不同分配平台分配和观看电视的电力进行评估。我们使用一种新颖的方法，将生命周期评估技术与实际用户行为的多样性模型相结合，这些模型源自详细的受众监控和在线行为分析数据。这可以用于评估给定媒体公司的整体用电量 s 服务，并允许比较每个分配平台每个观众小时的电力需求。我们将此应用于具有代表性的国家电视提供商 - 英国广播公司 - 并显示 2016 年 BBC 分发/观看用电量的平均估计值为 2171 GWh，导致排放量为 1.12 MtCO2e。我们表明，通过流媒体、有线和卫星平台观看每设备小时使用的平均电量为 0.17-0.18 千瓦时（88-93 克二氧化碳当量），而地面广播使用的平均电量为 0.07 千瓦时（36 克二氧化碳当量）。我们将家庭网络设备和机顶盒确定为系统中的关键热点，并表明虽然流媒体的影响与有线和卫星相似，但这是因为人们使用较小的设备来观看——这意味着家庭内外的网络设备具有较高的影响，而终端设备具有较低的影响。