The Challenge:
Proposed by Champions: ITV, EBU
Building on the foundation of the 2024 project, Phase 2 shifts focus to overcome the challenge of limited data access and engagement. While the 2024 project demonstrated proof-of-concept optimizations and highlighted the industry's state of play, Phase 2 introduces a digital twin to simulate pipelines and engages platform teams directly through interviews and presentations. New participants, including CDN providers, bring expertise in pipeline simulation and data modeling. This phase emphasizes creating actionable business cases and strategic alignment to make sustainability a core objective across the industry.
The ECOFLOW Phase 2 project addresses the lack of visibility and accountability in the energy consumption of streaming media pipelines. Despite the growing need for sustainability in Media & Entertainment, platform teams and technology vendors, such as CDNs, lack incentives and tools to monitor and reduce energy usage. This hampers the industry's ability to implement impactful changes across the value chain. ECOFLOW aims to create a digital twin of streaming pipelines, simulating energy-saving optimizations, and to engage product teams with compelling business cases for prioritizing energy efficiency, addressing both technical and organizational challenges.
This project will explore two innovative areas: (1) The development of a digital twin, in collaboration with Fraunhofer and Greening of Streaming, to simulate and optimize streaming pipelines, enabling data-driven insights even in the absence of complete real-world data. (2) Engagement with platform product teams to understand barriers and motivations for adopting energy-saving objectives. By combining these, the project will bridge technical and cultural gaps, driving a holistic shift toward sustainability in streaming. Additional innovations include energy impact visualizations, AI-driven optimizations, and new methodologies for incentivizing data transparency from technology vendors such as CDNs.