Websites don’t exist in the ether. The files, images and data that muster on your screen have to come from somewhere and that somewhere uses energy.
Hosting providers
When it comes to choosing a hosting provider, it’s important to consider how they power the service they’re offering. Many providers now make a point of advertising that their infrastructure is powered by 100% renewable energy. Even if a provider doesn’t explicitly publish their renewable energy mix, it’s likely that the data centre hosting your website has a higher renewable energy mix than your (grid-powered) home. Most data centres are already trying to reduce their carbon footprint.
How do I check?
If you’re struggling to find out if your website hosting provider is powered by 100% renewable energy, the first step is to check with The Green Web Foundation. The Green Web Foundation was rebooted in 2020 and now maintains a good database of providers and data centres that are 100% powered by renewable energy. If your website is not 100% powered by renewable energy or doesn’t appear in the Green Web Foundation database, then it’s worth reaching out to your provider and asking them about their energy mix.
Website builders
While a proportion of the carbon emissions generated by a website are attributable to the hosting provider or server infrastructure, it’s likely that the majority of emissions are created by website visitors. When a visitor views a webpage, they download all of the relevant data from the hosting provider onto their device. The amount of data the hosting provider sends to each visitor can be controlled through good website design and build practices. The fastest and cleanest websites send as little data as possible. As a result, this generates fewer carbon emissions. Therefore, when choosing a website builder it’s imperative to test how well those websites perform. There are a few ways to do this.
Testing websites
If you want to test a website purely for its potential carbon emissions impact, then try Neuto Browser Extension as this will give you a quick insight into the carbon emission of any webpage. We also recommend PageSpeed Insights from Google. This online auditing tool can test any webpage and provide, well, insights into how well it performs. To gain a full understanding of both the carbon emissions impact and general performance, use the two tools above in parallel.
No website yet?
If you’ve not set up your website yet, then investigate the template or demo sites for the web builders or platforms that you’re considering. Although every website is different and there’s no way of generating accurate results using this method, it will provide a rough estimate of how your future website could perform.