The carbon footprint of digital industries – Understanding the hidden impact

At the core

Dematerialized production methods come with their own sustainability challenges. The film and TV industry is increasingly digital, but although mostly invisible to the user, digital does not equal impact-free. The digital climate impact is an increasingly important subject, especially with the expansion of AI. The environmental challenges our planet faces demands restructuring of resources and actions everywhere. The Global Tipping Point Conference in July 2025 bluntly summarized, “the window to avoid irreversible climate impacts is ‘rapidly closing’”(1). 

Global electricity consumption rapidly growing

Rising electricity demand is becoming a key sustainability concern. Both globally and in Finland, data centers are consistently cited as major drivers of this acceleration (2)(3)(4)(5). In 2024, the emissions from electricity generation totaled approximately 13,800 million tons of CO₂, making it the largest-emitting sector globally (6). The numbers are striking. Global electricity consumption reached approximately 30,000 TWh in 2024, up about 4.3% from 2023, and is projected to continue growing by over 3,500 TWh in total through 2027. This corresponds to adding more than the equivalent of Japan to the world’s electricity consumption each year (6). In Finland, total electricity consumption in 2024 was around 82.7 TWh, up 3% from 2023 (7). Finland’s transmission system operator Fingrid is preparing for a 50% increase in electricity production and consumption by 2030 (5). And even with renewable energy sources, neither our planet nor the electrical grid can withstand endless acceleration.

Linking the digital world to environmental impacts

Our digital carbon footprint is measured by emissions caused by the production, use and data transfer of digital devices and services. Every online search, e-mail, and streamed video contributes towards the footprint, and the emissions in this context are generally formed in three areas (8):

• storing and processing data in data centers (including cloud services)
• transmitting data through telecommunications networks (including both mobile and fixed-line infrastructure)
• displaying and processing content and data on end-user devices

The environmental impact and the greenhouse gas emissions in these areas are caused by electricity consumption, the manufacturing process of devices and hardware, and water use and consumption for cooling data centers (=servers). Additionally, AI-driven technologies are demanding a massive increase in computing power across the entire digital ecosystem, accelerating the impacts rapidly.

Why data centers? 

Data centers are in the center of the impacts. Everything we do in a digital world is mostly taking place within them.

– Alex de Vries, researcher, VU Amsterdam and founder of Digiconomist, on APFI’s webinar series “Backstage of Tech”, 13.3.2025.

To uncover the environmental impact of digital infrastructure, we need to look at data centers. These large facilities house high-performance computing equipment that consume vast amount of electricity and produce substantial waste heat, often requiring water-based cooling methods.

Data centers are now also powering the growing processing and energy demand of AI-driven technologies. In addition to sustaining the operating of AI models, de Vries stresses how the initial (training) stage of AI models is by far more energy and water consuming. What makes it so energy intensive is the large clusters of specialized equipment, and the energy intensive computational power needed to train AI model networks with up to trillions of parameters. The more parameters are used in training, the more robust the training stage becomes, which in turn produces a better AI model, but also increases environmental impact.

In Finland, data centers benefit from access to low-carbon electricity and efficient water-cooling systems, helping reduce their local environmental impact. But the digital ecosystem is global, and the impacts extend far beyond single data center locations. (9)

Many countries are already seeing actual strain on their electricity grids due to data center expansion. Ireland’s data centers, supporting the operations of major companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, have since 2023 consumed more electricity than the country’s residential homes in total, now standing at 22% of the total energy consumption. By 2028, data centers are projected to consume a third of Ireland’s electricity. (10) In the US, the data center energy consumption will be increasing by 2028 from the current 4.4% of the national electricity consumption to up to 12% (11). De Vries compared, “OpenAI are in 2025 lobbying to open up 5–7 data centers in the USA, which each hyperscale data center consuming up to 40–50 TWh per year, which is roughly half of Finland’s total annual electricity usage.”

The water consumption of data centers is steadily growing as data processing becomes more energy intensive. Shaolei Ren highlights: “Just one tech company consumed 24 billion liters of water in 2023 for its data centers.” This is equivalent to 44% of the total annual residential water consumption in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, which was 55 billion liters in 2024 (12). According to Ren, even in Finland where the energy grid is relatively low-carbon and efficient cooling systems are used, 24 text-prompt- LLM-responses will consume the equivalent of 0,5L water. And as AI-driven technologies drive up energy use in data centers, there is also a growing public health concern due to emissions and air pollution, both locally and globally, with new scientific research uncovering even more aspects of data center emissions (13).

Looking ahead

Sustainable practices are already integrated in many areas of the film and TV industry, and digital workspaces now have to be included. Conscious choices can have long-term impact, and it’s essential to rethink how technology is sustainably embedded into industry workflows. Small actions like sending fewer emails or turning off your camera on video calls are a great way to start, but the real change comes from assessing the sustainability of your entire digital ecosystem.

Up to 60% of data stored in energy-intensive cloud environments is considered redundant, obsolete, or trivial (called ROT-data) (14)(15). Regularly cleaning up, auditing and streamlining cloud use, servers, and project files can significantly reduce emissions.

When using AI-driven technologies, not all AI-tools have the same environmental impact. For example, text generation typically requires far less energy than image or video generation (16). De Vries highlights that using AI-driven technology should be justified, and not just a habit: “If you’re thinking about using AI for whatever application, first of all, just take a step back and think about: what are you actually trying to achieve, and what are you trying to solve?”

On the regulatory side, new sustainability reporting requirements will include disclosure of Scope 3 emissions, including those from digital services and AI-driven technology. However, accurate reporting remains a challenge, as many digital service providers do not disclose sufficient emissions data. Pushing service providers to be more transparent and disclose emissions data is crucial to enable real accountability.

The webinar series Backstage of Tech can be seen here: 

Backstage of Tech, Session 1 (27.02.2025)
Backstage of Tech, Session 2 (13.03.2025)
Backstage of Tech, Session 3 (20.03.2025)

Audiovisual Producers Finland – APFI is a non-profit association dedicated to representing the interests of Finnish audiovisual producers. Sustainability is one of the pillars of APFI’s mission, and APFI has since 2021 run national initiatives to promote environmentally sustainable practices in the industry. APFI:s work on environmental sustainability and the webinar series Backstage of Tech is funded by the NextGenerationEU-program, via the Ministry of Education and Culture.

SOURCES:

(1) Carbon Brief, 2025, carbonbrief.org/tipping-points-window-to-avoid-irreversible-climate-impacts-is-rapidly-closing
(2) IEA, 2024, iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ddd078a8-422b-44a9-a668-52355f24133b/Electricity2024-Analysisandforecastto2026.pdf
(3) Statista, 2025, statista.com/topics/6462/global-electricity/#topicOverview
(4) Ember, 2025, ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2025
(5) Fingrid, 2024, fingrid.fi/en/news/news/2024/updated–prospects-for-electricity-production-and-consumption–long-term-prospects-unchanged
(6) IEA, 2025, iea.org/reports/electricity-2025/
(7) Statistics Finland, 2025, stat.fi/en/publication/cm1kktw8ualm207vwnzpsmpc8
(8) Carbon Trust, 2021, ctprodstorageaccountp.blob.core.windows.net/prod-drupal-files/documents/resource/public/Carbon-impact-of-video-streaming.pdf
(9) The Green Web Foundation, 2024, thegreenwebfoundation.org/publications/report-ai-environmental-impact
(10) Central Statistics Office, 2025, cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/datacentresmeteredelectricityconsumption2024/
(11) Reuters, 2024, reuters.com/business/energy/us-data-center-power-use-could-nearly-triple-by-2028-doe-backed-report-says-2024-12-20
(12) Helsinki Annual Report, 2024, hel.fi/static/kanslia/Julkaisut/2025/helsingin-kaupunki-vuosikertomus-2024_en.pdf
(13) Shaolei Ren, 2024, news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/12/09/ais-deadly-air-pollution-toll
(14) Forbes, 2023, forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/01/12/how-to-keep-your-data-from-rot-ing-in-the-cloud
(15) OECD, 2023, oecd-opsi.org/blog/digital-decarbonization
(16) Hugging face, 2023, huggingface.co/papers/2311.16863