  Assessing the energy consumption or carbon footprint of data distribution of
video streaming services is usually carried out through energy or carbon
intensity figures (in Wh or gCO2e per GB). In this paper, we first review the
reasons why such approaches are likely to lead to misunderstandings and
potentially to erroneous conclusions. To overcome those shortcomings, we
propose a new methodology whose key idea is to consider a video streaming usage
at the whole scale of a territory, and evaluate the impact of this usage on the
network infrastructure. At the core of our methodology is a parametric model of
a simplified network and Content Delivery Network (CDN) infrastructure, which
is automatically scaled according to peak usage needs. This allows us to
compare the power consumption of this infrastructure under different scenarios,
ranging from a sober baseline to a generalized use of high bitrate videos. Our
results show that classical efficiency indicators do not reflect the power
consumption increase of more intensive Internet usage, and might even lead to
misleading conclusions.
