Sustainable Web
In the digital age, every online interaction, from browsing a webpage to streaming a video, consumes energy and contributes to carbon emissions. The internet accounts for approximately 3.7% of global carbon emissions, a figure that continues to rise with increasing data consumption.
Why sustainable web matters
Understanding Carbon Emissions per Page Visit
This model uses data transfer as a proxy indicator for total resource usage, and uses this number to extrapolate energy usage numbers for your application as a fraction of the energy used by the total system comprised of:
- the use-phase energy of datacentres serving content
- the use-phase energy network transfering the data
- the use-phase energy of user device an user is accessing content on
- the total embodied energy used to create all of the above
It then converts these energy figures to carbon emissions, based on the carbon intensity of electricity from the Ember annual global electricity review.
The carbon intensity of electricity figures for the swd model include the full lifecycle emissions including upstream methane, supply-chain and manufacturing emissions, and include all gases, converted into CO2 equivalent over a 100 year timescale.
This follows the approach used by the IPCC 5th Assessment Report Annex 3 (2014), for the carbon intensity of electricity.