Your website has a climate footprint
Digital transformation is part of the solution to the climate crisis, but it is not enough in itself. When we talk about being climate friendly, how much space your website takes up matters too. The bigger your page, the more energy your visitors use when they visit it – and the bigger the digital climate impact of the page.
9% of the world's energy consumption is attributable to Internet activity
Data equals energy consumption and energy consumption equals CO2 emissions. That's why it makes sense to minimise the amount of data in order to minimise climate impact too. Therefore, when working with digital transformation, e.g. developing websites and web solutions, we need to do this with respect for energy consumption.
What about offsetting our carbon usage?
Many hosting centres today use green energy, and several websites offset their carbon usage, and on that basis call their website CO2-neutral. But with an impending climate crisis, it makes sense to focus on optimising web solutions as well. Our position is that a website should only send the data that is needed. In the long term, it is not enough for companies simply to offset carbon through the purchase of certificates.
The digital journey: This is the connection between a website and its climate footprint
A website travels from a server over the Internet to a user's computer. 25% of power consumption is related to the server, while the remaining 75% is related to the Internet journey and the page display on the computer's browser.
Let's take a closer look at the different elements of the digital journey and their impact on climate. This description should not be seen as an exhaustive list, but rather gives an idea of the overall picture.
Website
The size of the page data will affect the power consumption throughout the digital journey from hosting to downloading. So it's important that, from the outset, it is developed and implemented with a focus on optimisation.
If you code it yourself using one of the many tools available, make sure you only retrieve the part of the code you need, so that the rest of the code does not take up unnecessary space. If codes and files are optimised correctly, this will not affect the user experience. In our experience, a single page on a website
Hosting centre
It requires power to host websites – for the actual operation of the server, firewalls, network components, backup, etc. Many hosting centres are working today to minimise power consumption, among other things by optimising cooling. If green energy is used at the hosting centre, this also leaves a smaller climate footprint.
Internet
When you visit a website, data is sent over the Internet to view the website on your screen. The page is sent with data packets that “travel” through fibre optic cables, access points and routers. They all have to use power, and the climate impact is therefore affected by the amount of data and also by whether the electricity is green.
Cloud (files in the cloud)
The website can use what is called a content delivery network (CDN), or “cloud”. This solution means that a website's files are shared on servers in a worldwide network. When a user in Singapore, for example, downloads the website, the CDN can deliver up to 95% of the files from a server in the cloud close to the user, while only the remaining 5% – the content itself – will travel the long way from the hosting server in Denmark, for example.
If a website has many visitors from all over the world, the CDN can help reduce the amount of data sent over the Internet, thereby minimising the climate impact.
Computer – tablet – smartphone
When you visit a website, you use power to view the page. Power consumption depends on how much space the page takes up and how much energy the browser requires to display the page. If the page is well constructed, minimal energy will be required to display it. If you need to visit the page several times, you can set your browser to remember and save the website's resource files so that you won't need to use power to download the same files over and over again. This helps minimise the amount of data sent and helps reduce energy consumption.
How much space should a website take up?
There is no single answer for how much space a website should take up. However, the smaller it is, the less power it will consume. The numbers below can be used indicatively.
Source: TypoConsult
