The Carbon Cost of Your Streaming Habit

Every time you stream a show in 4K, you're burning coal — or at least, you might be. In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig into the surprisingly large carbon footprint of the internet: from data centers that each gulp as much electricity as a mid-size town, to the hidden geography of where your Netflix binge actually runs. Lucas breaks down the numbers — a single hour of HD streaming emits roughly 55 grams of CO2, but 4K quadruples that, and the real story is where the data center gets its power. Luna pushes back on the blame-the-consumer framing, arguing that the real leverage point is corporate renewable-energy procurement by the big cloud providers. They explore how data center efficiency has improved dramatically — measured by power usage effectiveness, or PUE — yet absolute energy use keeps climbing because we stream more, store more, and compute more. The episode closes on a forward-looking question: as AI inference grows, will data center carbon become a climate blind spot? A classic Climate Economics deep-dive that will change how you think about your watch history. #CarbonFootprint #Streaming #DataCenters #CloudComputing #Netflix #YouTube #4KStreaming #EnergyEfficiency #PUE #RenewableEnergy #ClimatePolicy #InternetEmissions #Economics #ClimateEconomics #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #LucasAndLuna #GreenTech Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo