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Video Summary
Have you ever considered that your own website has a carbon footprint? It’s true. The internet is a powerful tool that has revolutionized the way we communicate, the way we access information, and the way we do business.
However, the increased use of the Internet has also led to a significant increase in the amount of energy consumed by data centers and servers. Every action you take online as well as every click on your website uses electricity, and the interactions around the world add up to those big numbers.
If you have never checked the footprint of your own website, well, now is the time! Here are tips to reduce the carbon footprint of your website…
Video Transcript
Hello, my name is Jeffrey Kirk.
Within the next couple of weeks, our house is going to become a mini electric power plant! The solar panels are up on the roof and all the electronics are in place. Now we’re just waiting for the electric utility to come up and install a meter.
And once they do that, our house will start producing electricity from the sun. And, theoretically, over the course of a year, we will generate more electricity than we use, reducing our electric bills and our carbon footprint. I’m pretty excited about all this!
Anyway, this whole thing got me thinking. My own computers will run on solar power now, but what about my website? What about the data that moves over the internet? That’s all electricity. And how is that electricity produced?
Digital Carbon Footprint
Have you ever considered that your own website has a carbon footprint? It’s true. The internet is a powerful tool that has revolutionized the way we communicate, the way we access information, and the way we do business.
However, the increased use of the Internet has also led to a significant increase in the amount of energy consumed by data centers and servers. In fact, it’s estimated that the internet currently accounts for about 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and this number is expected to increase as more and more people come online.
You would think that using the internet and converting to digital is good for the environment, right? You know, getting those credit card bills in your email instead of postal mail means less paper. Same with reading a book on your Kindle instead of buying a physical book. And really, that is all good stuff, but we often fail to consider that our data usage contributes to energy consumption.
Based on the latest report I saw, which is already 2 years old, it says the internet consumes about 416.2TWh of power per year. That means the internet consumes more electricity than the United Kingdom and almost as much as France!
Your Website’s Carbon Footprint
Every action you take online as well as every click on your website uses electricity, and the interactions around the world add up to those big numbers. And, every online search you do releases about 0.2g of CO2 into the environment. That’s a pretty small number for just a single search on a simple search page like Google. But how much CO2 do we create when we add up all the billions of search queries around the world every single day?
An even more complicated website with heavy videos and images can generate more than 10g of CO2 per view. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly important for website owners to take steps to reduce the carbon footprints of their websites.
If you have never checked the footprint of your own website, well, now is the time! It’s really easy to do with the Website Carbon Calculator.
This tool pulls up your website, does some magical calculations, and gives you the carbon emissions number in grams of CO2.
I just checked my own site, and the tool says that 0.26 g of CO2 is produced every time someone visits the home page.
What Can We Really Do To Reduce This Carbon Footprint?
One of the main ways to reduce the carbon footprint of a website is to choose energy-efficient servers and host them in a location with a low carbon footprint.
Server Location
The location of a server can have a significant impact on its carbon footprint since the energy used to power the server may come from either fossil fuels, renewable sources, or some combination. Additionally, older servers are less energy-efficient than newer ones, so it’s important to consider upgrading to more energy-efficient models.
Another important factor to consider is the efficiency of the data center that hosts the server.
Hosting Provider
If you have a website, then you probably have a hosting provider. Hosts also have data centers where they keep thousands of computers and cooling systems that are running 24/7.
These data centers consume a large amount of energy to keep servers cool, so it’s important to choose a data center that uses energy-efficient cooling systems. Some data centers use renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power, which can greatly reduce the carbon footprint of the web servers and the websites they host.
That’s why it’s a good idea to look for green hosting providers who are committed to reducing their carbon footprint by using sustainable energy resources. The Green Web Foundation maintains a list of hosting companies that provide proof of their green claims. You can find this directory at Green Web Foundation.
Website Content
Another important factor to consider when reducing the carbon footprint of a website is the content of your website itself. Big images, videos, and other large files significantly increase the amount of data that gets transferred and stored. These things increase the energy consumption of the website.
And don’t forget that big files and images make your website load slower, and a slow website gives a poor user experience and is bad for your SEO. That bulky featured image you love might be the thing hurting your site the most.
To reduce this carbon footprint of a website, it’s important to optimize the content of the website. This can be done by compressing images and videos and reducing the use of complex scripts. Reducing the size of your images before uploading them to your site will also help improve the loading speed.
And you can avoid uploading videos to your site altogether. It’s pretty simple to embed links from video hosting platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, or others.
Technically, you’re just moving the electric burden around a bit, but some of the big hosting environments like YouTube have already embraced sustainable energy. However, if you want to add a video directly to your site, then make sure to keep it short and turn off the auto-play feature.
Additionally, you can use a content delivery network (CDN) that distributes content to users from servers that are located nearest to them. This reduces the data transit distance and also helps your website load faster, again, providing a better user experience.
Website Cleanup
Next, clean your website regularly. Just avoiding clutter in general benefits the environment. A clean and simple website saves energy by helping your visitors find what they are looking for as efficiently as possible. This reduces unnecessary clicks and the amount of energy used. You can achieve this by updating your website and avoiding duplicate content.
On the technical side, use simple and clean code, uncomplicated website buttons, and remove plugins you no longer need.
Did you know that bot traffic also accounts for a big chunk of internet usage? Bots make server requests, and they visit your website often, so they contribute to the total usage of your site. You can help reduce this traffic by blocking bad bots from entering your site. You can check your server logs to find which bots offer no value to you.
This also includes search engine bots that crawl your website and your content. If you haven’t done so already, update your robots.txt file in order to direct these bots to the appropriate parts of your website.
Cloud Hosting
Another way to reduce the carbon footprint of a website is to use cloud hosting. Cloud hosting typically allows more websites to share the same physical server. If set up correctly, this can reduce the energy consumption of each website hosted.
Additionally, cloud hosting providers often use energy-efficient servers and data centers, which can further reduce the carbon footprint of an individual website.
One of the main benefits of cloud hosting is scalability. As the traffic on a website increases, the website can easily be scaled to handle the increased traffic, without the need for additional servers. Doing this can reduce the energy consumption of the website, as it eliminates the need for additional servers that would otherwise have to be both powered and cooled.
Overall
Now, let’s keep all of this in proper perspective. The internet is amazing. The fact that you can have an interest in a subject and find a video like this one supports some of the many benefits. The fact that your business has a website, and that website helps you get new clients so you can help them solve their problems, demonstrates the power of the internet, the power of this medium.
If you have enjoyed this video today, please click the thumbs up icon to like it. And if you would take the next step and subscribe to my channel, I would really appreciate that as well.
Today’s video is simply meant to introduce the idea that websites have a carbon footprint and that there are actions website owners can take to reduce the footprint of their own websites. By choosing energy-efficient servers and hosting them in a location with a low carbon footprint, optimizing the website content, and using cloud hosting, website owners can make a big impact.
Furthermore, it’s important to consider upgrading to newer energy-efficient servers, using renewable energy sources, and taking advantage of the scalability and efficiency of cloud hosting. Reducing the carbon footprint of your website is not only good for the environment, but it can also help to reduce costs and improve the overall performance of your website.
And these are all good things that give website owners a role in creating a more sustainable future for the internet.
Your business deserves to be seen online, and I will help you get there.
Thanks for watching and have a great day!
