Low-Carbon Websites: Introduction
Today, we’re delighted to share a guest blog by Roger Knight, founder of AttractMore, a Play It Green customer specialising in designing low carbon websites. At Play It Green, we love to showcase the amazing work our members are doing to promote sustainability.
Understanding what low carbon websites are and why they matter can help your business reduce its environmental impact while enhancing efficiency.
Are You Aware of the Carbon Emissions Generated by Using the Internet?
Despite working in website development for many years, I was blissfully ignorant of how much carbon pollution the internet generates until about two years ago. That’s when I read articles claiming that the internet uses 3.7% of all the world’s electricity. Given that most of this electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, internet usage is responsible for a significant amount of carbon emissions.
These reports consider the internet as a whole—emails, video and audio streaming, websites, data storage, and more. In this post, I’ll focus on websites and how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by creating low carbon websites.
How Do Websites Use Electricity?
Websites consume power mainly in three areas:
- Data Centres: These are large facilities filled with web servers and associated equipment. They store all the code for websites and assemble the different components to send back to the user.
- Networks: Transmitting data from the web server to the user’s device consumes power. The more data we send, the more power we use.
- Devices: Laptops, phones, and other devices consume electricity, and websites require some of that power to function.
To put this into context, consider a web page with average carbon emissions that receives 10,000 visits a year. The electricity needed for those visits is roughly equal to boiling a kettle for a cup of tea 12,000 times. Imagine how much more power is used by pages with high emissions visited more frequently!
How Can We Reduce Power Usage?
Firstly, we can choose to host our websites with companies that use renewable energy to power their data centres. There are reputable companies now offering this service. However, this may only reduce website emissions by around 10%.
In my experience, the greatest carbon reductions come from controlling the amount of data transmitted over the internet from the server to the user’s device. Here are some examples:
- Optimise Images: It’s inefficient to send large images to a phone. It’s better to send an image closer to the size it will be viewed at on the device. Moreover, images should be compressed before transmission to reduce the amount of data sent.
- Lazy Loading: Don’t immediately load images that aren’t visible on the screen, i.e., those further down the page. Wait until the user scrolls towards them before loading. This can save a lot of data.
- Video Content: Don’t automatically load videos. Wait until the user clicks on the video. By doing so, you prevent unnecessary data transfer if the user isn’t interested.
- Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): Use a data centre close to the majority of your users. Therefore, the data travels a shorter distance, reducing power consumption.
Many other techniques can be used as well. Essentially, they all aim at improving the efficiency of the website. Improved efficiency means less power needed and reduced carbon emissions, resulting in a low-carbon website.
The Additional Benefits of Low-Carbon Websites
There is an important additional benefit.
An efficient website is also a fast website. Fast page loading is a factor that Google uses when deciding the order of web pages in the search results. Google rewards faster web pages in the search results because users much prefer fast-loading pages to slower ones.
So, reducing the carbon emissions of your website is not only good for the planet, it also gives you a faster website.
What Does AttractMore Do? Plus a Special Offer!
At AttractMore, we create low-carbon websites that are effective, well-designed and that help businesses grow. We’ve been working on low-carbon websites for the last couple of years and we’ve been able to reduce carbon emissions on client projects by between 80-90%. We also implement changes to existing sites to make them more efficient.
In conjunction with Play It Green we have an offer for you. We will calculate the carbon emissions of one page of your website and provide some recommendations on how you can reduce those emissions.
Just let us have some quick information and we’ll do the rest.
Here’s the link https://www.attractmore.uk/play-it-green-carbon-report/.
AttractMore and Play It Green
AttractMore joined Play It Green in February of this year. Even though we develop effective websites that use the lowest amount of power, I am conscious that the sites we create, as well as running the business generally, still consume power. I was on the lookout for an effective way to compensate for the greenhouse gases we were responsible for.
I met Richard Dickson through a mutual contact and was impressed with what Play It Green has achieved with their Reduce, Repair, Regive approach. It was immediately apparent that this was a hugely worthwhile initiative. Therefore, I felt that Play It Green was the organisation I wanted to team up with to rebalance the environmental impact of my business and learn more about sustainability in general.
Low-Carbon Websites: Wrap Up
Understanding the impact of the internet on carbon emissions is crucial. By focusing on creating low carbon websites, we can significantly reduce this impact. Not only does this benefit the environment, but it also improves website performance and user satisfaction.
If you’re interested in reducing your website’s carbon footprint and enhancing its efficiency, consider implementing the strategies discussed. Together, we can make a difference.
About The Author
Roger Knight, Founder and CEO, AttractMore
Roger Knight is passionate about helping ambitious businesses succeed online. He specialises in creating fast, secure, and effective websites and online stores that not only attract the right customers and drive sales but also deliver an excellent return on investment. With a commitment to sustainability, Roger ensures that his digital solutions are designed to keep carbon emissions low, aligning with your carbon reduction strategy.
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