Cut Music's Impact on Climate: Download your tunes

Digital downloads have been blamed for eviscerating the music industry's profit model -- but compared to commerce in compact discs, they're great for the climate.

Get your latest Black Eyed Peas, Beyonce or Lady Gaga via the internet, and you'll cut the energy and carbon dioxide overhead by 40 to 80 percent over distribution of a physical CD, according to a new report commissioned by Microsoft and Intel.  The savings come in getting rid of physical packaging, delivery, and the compact disc itself; the range of impact depends upon whether the customer burns the music to a CD.

If you walk to the music store instead of driving, however, the CO2 emissions are about equal with downloading and burning, say the researchers.

So take heart, old-school consumers: If you prefer browsing for new tunes in the aisles instead of online, forestall green guilt by putting on your sneakers and going to the store under your own power.  (Consider it a new form of sneakernet.)

Also, downloads of around 260 MB or greater use enough internet energy to make them comparable in carbon pollution with the download and burn scenario, say the report's authors.

"However, as file sizes and Internet energy use are increasing, Internet energy efficiency is also increasing," they write, "thus it is unlikely even in the case of large file transfers for digital downloads to use more energy or produce more CO2 emissions than delivering music via CDs."