Digital music has a tiny carbon footprint
Category: Music

The Carbon Case for Downloading Music

The greenhouse gas impacts of various ways to access music.

A new study has found that downloading music is substantially better from an emissions perspective than buying compact discs.

The study, which was financed by both Microsoft and Intel and written by two academics at Carnegie Mellon University and a third affiliated with Stanford University, found that buying an album digitally reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 40 to 80 percent relative to a best-case scenario for purchasing a CD.

That scenario involves a customer buying a CD online and having it delivered via a light-duty truck; the more carbon-intensive options examined by the study are express air shipment of the CD, and the customer visiting a store to buy the CD.

The advantage for digital comes largely because CDs must be manufactured, packaged and transported over long distances.

Even in a situation in which a consumer downloads the music — and then burns it onto a CD and puts it in a CD case — the carbon differential is 40 percent in favor of the download, the study found. If the downloaded music is not burned onto a CD, the differential rises to 80 percent.

However, there is room for debate. The high carbon cost associated with visiting the store, for example, rises when customers make the trip by car. If a consumer walks to the store instead, then buying a CD is “nearly equivalent” in carbon terms, the study says, to downloading the music and burning it onto a CD.

Large file transfer sizes can reduce the carbon advantage of downloads, owing to “increased Internet energy use for downloading.” The study also concedes that in some instances, the downloading and purchasing of hard copies are not perfect substitutes. Some consumers, for example, pursue albums for reasons beyond the music — say, for the album’s artwork.

While the artwork is sometimes available for digital download as well, this may not be “completely satisfactory for some customers,” the authors write.

The study also did not look at the comparative carbon impact of CD players and digital music devices like the iPod.

Source: NY Times