Sustainability: Microsoft Teams Meetings

Sustainability (IP #3)

Introduction

Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based service that utilizes a growing amount of AI technology. In the interest of focus and brevity, I chose to study just the online meeting function of Teams which is a tool that my workplace uses every day for meetings, collaboration/knowledge sharing and training. I’m seeking to answer the question: what is the actual resource consumption for Microsoft Teams online meetings?

What I Found

I started off with high hopes of exactly what costs I wanted to research and analyze. I realised quickly that an analysis of this depth and detail would require more time and resources.  

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Types of Costs and Resources Consumed for Using Microsoft Teams Online Meetings:
Energy: Electrical energy, fossil fuel use during development and deployment.
Production: Extraction/mining, refining of materials for technology development.
Waste: Batteries, broken machines and parts.
Labour: Exploitation, violence, and socio-economic disparity.

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Instead, I adjusted my approach to be a good starting point. Components of the Teams online meeting app I wanted to research the carbon impact of: video/camera use, the screen sharing function, the impact of video filters and avatars, impact and energy consumption of Microsoft’s data centers, and the cost of uploading a file repeatedly to the meeting chat (making a copy of the file).

On average, a video conferencing app has a carbon impact of 157 g CO₂e per hour (Obringer et al., 2021). By turning off the camera for 15, 1-hour meetings, that would save 9.4 kg CO₂e (Obringer et al., 2021). The Teams online meeting app has one of the smaller carbon impacts in comparison to other popular video conferencing apps, but its environmental impact is still profound, especially considering its popularity (Corcuff, 2022). Sharing a screen in Teams can increase the carbon impact by an average of 42% (Corcuff, 2022). The device that Teams is used on affects the total carbon impact, with a mobile device using more energy when using video and/or screen sharing (Corcuff, 2022). Having the camera off, without screen sharing, could reduce the environmental impact by 96% (Obringer, 2021).

Among the most popular video conferencing applications, One minute of audio and video/camera use (on a laptop computer) consumes an average of 23.65 mAh (milliampere-hour, describing electric charge) (Corcuff, 2022). So, a 60-minute meeting/class using audio and video would consume 1,419 mAh. If a person had 20, 60-minute meetings/classes in one month, that would amount to 28,380 mAh (or567 watts). That is the equivalent to 1,012 km driven in an average gasoline-powered car (US EPA, 2015).

Challenges and Conclusion

I was only able to find information about the resource consumption of video/camera use and screen sharing. The reasoning for this, I think, is because this is fairly new territory, and the avatars and filters in Microsoft Teams online meeting are a newer function. However, I think the main reason is a lack of transparency in the industry and from Microsoft.

Microsoft doesn’t tell users that when only voice/audio is used in an online meeting, that it is significantly better for the environment (Obringer et al., 2021). Microsoft should provide customers the choice to adjust their online meeting settings to conserve energy and emissions (Obringer et al., 2021). Few people understand how our Teams meeting/classroom experience has been made possible technologically. What’s needed is radical transparency from service providers as well as more options allowing for people to customize their experience in video conferencing apps.

In June 2022, Microsoft released a new product, Microsoft Sustainability Manager, where cloud computing customers can monitor and manage their environmental impact (Microsoft Sustainability, n.d.). Commentary on Microsoft’s initiatives towards sustainability seem to be sequestered to particular pages of their website rather than being a main parameter outlined for all other products such as Teams and Teams online meetings. Microsoft outlined how they are taking steps in making their business more sustainable,but there is no mention of the other side of the coin, which is how everyday users can minimize their environmental impact as they use cloud-based applications such as Teams (Thomson, 2023).

I think enhancing usability is connected to a savings in resource consumption in Teams. From my observation, a file usually needs to be uploaded again to a meeting/classroom chat because participants are unable to locate the file from when it was initially uploaded. There is the option to save a new file or make a copy, but making file location more intuitive would be ideal. From reading Crawford’s Atlas of AI, I understand that mindlessly uploading to SharePoint from a Teams meeting is not only bloating the cloud storage that we have, but using additional environmental resources (Crawford, 2021). The benefits of cleaning out our personal OneDrive and SharePoint are twofold—it would reduce the amount that is stored in the cloud, and lessen the need to share a file in the chat out of convenience when finding it wouldn’t be so difficult once clutter is reduced.

I think there is an opportunity to reconsider the importance of having cameras active in online meetings/classes in relation to the environmental cost. Perhaps camera use needs to be more intentional and strategic; for example, participants only turn on their cameras when it has the most impact and benefit to learning; such as for group work, when speaking, or presenting to the class. In the corporate workplace, it is often widely believed that everyone should have their cameras on when meeting or learning as a class in Microsoft Teams. If trust can be utilized more, especially in large group settings. To trust that the person is listening, taking notes, and understanding; doing so would limit camera use and minimize camera fatigue (Shockley et al., 2021).

The length of time spent in online learning in Teams is another factor to consider. Rather than keeping a class online for 5 hours at a time, using a blended approach could mitigate exhaustion and reduce carbon impact greatly. Curriculum design is critical;directly transferring in-class methods to an online learning environment is generally unsuccessful (Mohd Basar et al., 2021). Designing a sustainable online class hosted within Teams might mean shifting how we implement and use that tool and adjusting the expectations that are placed on participants. I think with the COVID-19 pandemic, some social norms have taken hold in online learning and meeting environments, and [in the workplace] these norms haven’t been appraised at all or effectively in relation to research.

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References 

Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence.In Atlas of AI. Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300252392

Corcuff, L. (2022, September 6). The impact of our videoconferencing uses on mobile and PC. 2022 edition. Greenspector. https://greenspector.com/en/videoconferencing-apps-2022/

US EPA, O. (2015, August 28). Greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator. https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator

Microsoft Sustainability. (n.d.). Products for a sustainable future. Retrieved October 2, 2023, from https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/sustainability

Mohd Basar, Z., Mansor, A., Jamaludin, K., & Alias, B. (2021). The effectiveness and challenges of online learning for secondary school students­ ‑ A case study. Asian Journal of University Education, 17, 119–129. https://doi.org/10.24191/ajue.v17i3.14514

Obringer, R., Rachunok, B., Maia-Silva, D., Arbabzadeh, M., Nateghi, R., & Madani, K. (2021). The overlooked environmental footprint of increasing Internet use. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 167, 105389. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105389

Shockley, K. M., Gabriel, A. S., Robertson,D., Rosen, C. C., Chawla, N., Ganster, M. L., & Ezerins, M. E. (2021). The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings: A within-person field experiment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 106(8), 1137–1155. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000948

Thomson, J. (2023, May 10). On the road to 2030: Our 2022 environmental sustainability report. Microsoft On the Issues. https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2023/05/10/2022-environmental-sustainability-report/