Website Carbon Calculator: The world’s first carbon calculator for websites

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This website carbon calculator has been created by wholegrain data to help inspire and educate people to create a zero carbon internet. It is hosted using renewable energy.

WORDS FROM WEBSITE CARBON CALCULATOR:

We have updated the background data in V2 of the Website Carbon Calculator. The new data shows carbon impacts being roughly one third of those reported by the V1 carbon calculator, partly thanks to more robust data and partly due to the efficiency of web technology increasing rapidly over the past few years. V1 used data from 2012 whereas V2 uses data from 2017/18.

If you have previously tested a website with the v1 calculator and wish to adjust it, you can do so by dividing your V1 result (the grams of CO2 produced) by three. 

Calculating the carbon emissions of website is somewhat of a challenge, but using five key pieces of data we can make a pretty good estimate:

  1. Data transfer over the wire

  2. Energy intensity of web data

  3. Energy source used by the data centre

  4. Carbon intensity of electricity

  5. Website traffic

WHICH PAGES DO WE TEST?

The public version of the tool is designed to be simple and give a rough idea of website efficiency and so we only test the homepage of a site.  We hope to later release a more advanced version with the option to test specific internal pages.

Any website can be tested but only sites that comply with the following guidelines are included in our ranking tables:

  • Can be accessed by the public through a standard web browser

  • Do not require login

  • Allow search engines

  • Contain unique content aimed at human visitors – this excludes holding pages, error pages, server notification pages, demo pages or pages that are generally useless (this is highly subjective)

  • Are free from illegal or explicit content

Websites that do not meet the above criteria may be deleted from our database and/or excluded from ranking tables.

WHAT YOU CAN FIND AT WEBSITE CARBON CALCULATOR: TESTING, WEB SUSTAINABILITY, CURIOUSLY GREEN NEWSLETTER, WHOLEGRAIN DIGITAL, ZERO CARBON INTERNET, RENEWABLE ENERGY AND FURTHER READING.

 
TechnologyNohelia RambalData, Website, Carbon Emission, Energy, W