Low-carbon websites are websites that do not generate significant carbon dioxide emissions when they are viewed.
Why do websites generate carbon dioxide emissions? That is a longer story – basically, it is because of the energy that is used by the data centres that host a website, by the interconnected systems that make up the internet and that allow the data making up that website to be transmitted to the computer or other device on which you are viewing the site, and also by that computer or device in itself, which will likewise be using energy.
Information from the International Energy Agency (IEA) states that ‘Data centres and data transmission networks are responsible for 1% of energy-related Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions’.
While that number may seem low, it is quite shocking to think that the average web page produces approximately 0.8 grams CO2-equivalent per page view. That quickly adds up, and for a website with 10,000 monthly page views, the carbon dioxide generated is 102kg CO2 per year. This puts our casual browsing of the internet into stark perspective, and has led many people to question what can be done to improve this and how as web developers we can try to mitigate these emissions.
‘Since 2010, emissions have grown modestly despite rapidly growing demand for digital services, thanks to energy efficiency improvements, renewable energy purchases by information and communications technology (ICT) companies and broader decarbonisation of electricity grids in many regions.’
Whilst action is being taken across the board to lessen the environmental impact of usage of the internet, it is estimated that emissions will need to halve by 2030 in order to get on track with the European Green deal target to achieve Net Zero Emissions by 2050.
Growing processor-intensive technologies such as cryptocurrency mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence-based chatbots have the potential to put huge demands on data centre services and the energy needed to power them in the future. As these technologies continue to gain usage, their environmental impact is likely only to grow. Just how much energy they will each consume per year in ten years, thirty years or one hundred years from now is currently unknown, but extrapolating from recent trends, it would be reasonable to suppose that these technologies will each require colossal amounts of energy globally. The streaming of films and video on the internet also has a major impact.
While many business are taking steps to improve their overall environmental impacts, for instance by looking at how they can move towards renewable energy, examining their energy consumption levels and efficiency, implementing sustainable practices within their supply chains and reducing waste, the environmental impact of each business’s digital activities can often be overlooked.
What is a low-carbon website?
A low-carbon website is one that minimises the energy needed to load, run and display it, through the use of clean and uncomplicated design and low resource overheads.
Examples of measures that help in this direction include the optimisation of images, the use of vector artwork where possible (rather than photos), reductions in and simplification of source code, and the selection of a hosting provider whose servers are powered by renewable energy sources. Reducing the energy required to view and use your website will correspondingly reduce the carbon emissions associated with it.
Website Carbon Calculator
To view the carbon footprint of any page within your own website, head to Website Carbon Calculator and submit the web address of the page concerned.
You’ll be able to view how much CO2 is produced when each page in your site is visited, and some helpful equivalents based on the assumption that your site averages 10,000 monthly views of pages of like loading weight across the year.
Do not be alarmed by an unfavourable initial result when entering a page from your website – almost all have room for improvement.
The environmental impact of your website is perhaps something you have not fully considered before; and as with most sustainable practices within business operations, knowledge and awareness of potential environmental impacts is the best grounding from which to proceed to making meaningful improvements.
Below, we have run through some of the measures available towards such improvements.
Ways to Improve the Impact of your Website
Optimised Images and Limited Video
Consider carefully what images and video (if any) are needed on your website. The loading of large images and video will slow your site down and cause it to require more energy, increasing its environmental impact. Compress any images that are necessary for your website with a tool such a TinyPNG, which will allow you to reduce their size without noticeably affecting their visual quality; and consider using the modern .webp image format.
Minified Code
Check that the code used to build your website is as simple as it can be to achieve the functions needed, and that it is free from unnecessary characters and routines. This process is called minification, and is something your web developer should be able to help with. Slimming down your site from all angles – code as well as images - will help save valuable load time as well as reducing the environmental impact.
Easy navigation
Consider navigation and how a visitor will use your site. The fewer clicks needed to navigate to a destination, the lower the overall impact of the site will be. Think through the path that your user will take to move to a desired page, and simplify this path where you can. This process will also help to improve the user’s journey and experience of the site as a whole.
Considered pages and content
As well as assessing the journey of your user, reflect on what they are looking for and want to find when they access your website, and how to make that process faster. Are there any pages or content on your site that could be reduced or removed without losing the message of the business? Consider cutting any unnecessary content and pages to create a minimal, fast-loading site.
Load times
Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool that will allow you to assess the performance of your website as a whole. It offers detailed information on load speeds and in what ways these can be improved. The faster your site loads, the less energy will be used.
Green web hosting
Green web hosting is a term used to describe the hosting of websites in a relatively environmentally friendly way, producing less of a negative impact on the environment than conventional hosting. Green web hosts focus on using renewable energy to power their datacentres, in order to minimise carbon emissions and their greater impact on the world. Choosing to run your website via a green web host will significantly reduce the carbon produced every time your site is loaded, thus reducing your overall environmental impact as a business. Popular green web hosts include:
Krystal is a provider offering web and cloud hosting in a way that protects the planet. Powered by 100% renewable energy and available in four locations across the globe, they are striving to make a positive environmental difference. They pride themselves on an exceptional service supported by strong green credentials, one of which is offsetting staff's carbon emissions from birth. We think this is a company to watch.
Dedicated to climate-neutral hosting Ionos also uses 100% green energy. As they are Europe’s biggest hosting provider, their policies are of considerable environmental significance. Continuous improvements made to hardware and software, combined with the use of intelligent cooling solutions at their datacentres, have allowed them to take positive steps towards increasing their energy efficiency without sacrificing the level of service they provide. They also support remote working and encourage environmentally responsible modes of travel for employees.
Low carbon websites in practice
At GWS, we have worked on a website, Hacktonics, for a company associated with embedded systems security. The home page of this site scores an A+ on the Carbon Calculator website. Hacktonics is a relatively small but effective site, using fewer images than many, with more vector shapes, and utilising clear, simple navigation. We followed our own best-practice guidelines for processes to minimise digital environmental impact, as detailed above, in order to achieve this result.
Further steps we took included substituting Google’s reCAPTCHA with a honeypot system. Google’s reCAPTCHA can be more energy-intensive as the verification process requires a connection with Google’s servers. A honeypot uses a hidden field to trick bots into filling in invisible forms, so the program typically only needs to check for interaction with that field in order to identify the presence of a bot and disallow further interactions.
We also installed a web analytics plug-in that does not send data to an external server, as opposed to the behaviour of the industry standard Google Analytics 4. Such plug-ins generally tend to use your own server resources to run, rather than the accessing external servers or loading large amounts of Javascript as GA4 would, both of which tend to consume more energy than those of a self-contained plug-in.
We were pleased to be able to deliver a site with such low energy requirements and environmental impact, and will continue to explore techniques within our design and build processes that have the potential to reduce overall environmental impact further.
Conclusion
Along with many other areas of environmental impact upon which businesses are currently reflecting with a view to assessing areas where improvements can be made, digital impact should also be considered.
We understand that some businesses cannot offer the services they do without a large and complex website, which generally would lead to a greater environmental impact in terms of the sheer amount of energy needed to load the content of the site. For such businesses, the choice of a green web hosting provider could make a crucial difference.
What we can help with is making tweaks and background changes that together will result in a reduction in the energy requirements of your website, and therefore equally in CO2 emissions, no matter how your host data centre may be powered.
Please get in touch if our offerings in this area are something you would like to discuss.
