Scalable video coding offers a large choice of configurations when decoding a compressed video. A single encoded bitstream can be decoded in multiple modes, from a full video quality mode to different degraded video quality modes. In the bitstream, data is separated into layers, each layer containing the information relative to a quality level and depending on information from other layers. In the context of an energy constrained scalable video decoder executed on an embedded multicore platform, this paper investigates the energy consumption of an optimized decoder relative to the decoded layers and decoded video quality. These numbers show that a large set of trade-offs between energy and quality is offered by SHVC and can be used to precisely adapt the decoder to its energy constraints. © 2016 ECSI.