Accedo adds carbon and community impact KPIs to vendor marketplace

By embedding carbon and community KPIs directly into the procurement path, Accedo is shifting sustainability from a corporate social responsibility checkbox to a primary technical requirement. For service providers, this simplifies the management of Scope 3 emissions, which remain a significant hurdle in meeting 2030 net-zero targets. This transparency forces technology vendors to compete on environmental efficiency alongside traditional performance metrics. Expect more infrastructure providers to standardize these disclosures as European regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, begin to pressure global supply chains. Watch for whether these criteria become a requisite for inclusion in major RFP processes across the European broadcast market in 2025.

The pressure on the streaming sector is intensifying as research increasingly highlights its environmental footprint. Per TVBEurope and InterDigital in January 2025, the video streaming industry currently accounts for approximately 4% of total global greenhouse gas emissions—roughly double the impact of the aviation industry. A key driver identified in the reporting is the proliferation of 4K TV sets, which consume 1.7 times more energy per hour than 1080p HD models. In 2024 alone, television usage generated an estimated 54 million tons of CO2 equivalent, comparable to the annual emissions of over 11 million passenger vehicles.

Industry bodies are responding with more rigorous benchmarking. The DPP Sustainability Pulse Check 2025 indicated that despite economic headwinds, two-thirds of media organizations expect the importance of sustainability to increase through 2028. European broadcasters, including the BBC and ITV, have set aggressive targets to achieve net-zero status by 2030, a goal that requires strict environmental oversight across their entire technology stacks. According to SVG Europe in August 2025, while North American suppliers lag slightly behind their European counterparts in prioritizing environmental metrics, over 60% of US-based vendors now acknowledge that sustainability will be a defining factor in future procurement cycles.

Technical innovations like Bitmovin’s ECO Mode and Humans Not Robots’ HNR to ZERO platform are becoming critical tools for managing these rising energy costs. Per Bitmovin reporting from 2023, streaming in 720p versus Ultra HD can reduce data volume by up to ten times, directly lowering the energy required for CDN transmission and end-user decoding. Furthermore, research from HotCarbon in July 2024 suggests that while user devices still account for over 50% of streaming energy consumption, cloud-based optimizations and the adoption of more efficient codecs are the primary levers for industry-wide decarbonization.