How to Create Low-Carbon Websites to Achieve Carbon Neutrality

The environmental impact of your website might not be the first thing that springs to mind when considering ways to reduce your carbon footprint. But it’s worth considering, as building low-carbon websites can effectively boost your company’s environmental image and achieve your net-zero goals.

Here, we’ll explore the ins and outs of operating low-carbon or carbon-neutral websites. Plus, we’ll explain their benefits and the best ways to build them.

What are Low-Carbon Websites?

Low-carbon websites are designed, developed, and hosted in an environmentally friendly manner. They use fewer resources to run, have a smaller environmental impact, and contribute less to global warming, making them an integral part of the green IT movement.

You can implement various strategies to achieve this, including:

• Reducing energy consumption
• Optimizing resource usage
• Mitigating emissions associated with hosting and accessing the website

Why Build a Low-Carbon Website?

Building a low-carbon website is a great place to start if you’re looking for ways to reduce your organization’s carbon footprint and the amount of digital pollution you produce. In fact, in today’s competitive online landscape, you could argue that reducing the carbon footprint of your website is just as important as choosing the right top level domains.

Low-carbon websites are usually optimized for speed and efficiency. This results in better performance and a smoother user experience, all to the benefit of the people visiting your website. Faster loading times can reduce bounce rates, increase user engagement, and even improve search engine rankings.

Optimizing your website to be more energy-efficient can also lead to cost savings. Using fewer server resources and minimizing data transfer reduces hosting expenses, lowers your electricity bills, and reduces operational costs.

Having a low-carbon or carbon neutral website demonstrates a commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility. This can help you to achieve any net-zero targets that have been put in place for your organization.

It’s also worth mentioning that there’s an increasing expectation among consumers for businesses to demonstrate environmental responsibility and sustainability initiatives, inspired by high levels of concern about the environment across all age groups.

Building a low-carbon website can help you to meet these expectations, strengthening relationships with environmentally conscious stakeholders and helping you to build a positive brand image.

How to Build a Low-Carbon Website

There are many different ways to reduce the carbon footprint of your website. Below, we’ve gathered some of the most popular – and most effective – strategies to help you build a low-carbon or carbon neutral site.

Benchmark the Carbon Emissions of Your Website

The first step should be to find out what emissions your website currently produces. Then you’ll know exactly how much you need to reduce your carbon footprint to meet your targets.

There are a variety of tools available online that can help you to estimate the carbon emissions generated by your website. For example, WebsiteCarbon.com is a free tool that provides data on the CO2 emissions per page view, annual CO2 emissions, annual energy consumption, and even whether a website is hosted in a data center powered by renewable energy (more on that later).

Utilize a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of geographically distributed servers that work together to deliver digital content to users. The servers respond to the demand of users in their nearest geographical location to deliver digital content, such as images, videos, and other files, more efficiently.

Reducing the distance that data travels between user and server reduces the time taken for data transfer to reach users. This requires less energy and, ultimately, reduces carbon emissions.

As an added bonus, CDNs can also improve website performance and speed for a better user experience.

Switch to a Web Host Powered by Renewable Energy

Switching to a web host that is powered by sustainable energy sources is another great way to reduce the carbon footprint of your website.

Partnering with a hosting provider that sources their electricity from renewable sources, such as wind or solar power, will ensure that any steps you’re taking internally to reduce your carbon emissions won’t be offset by the actions of your web host.

Many hosting companies still use non-renewable electricity to power their servers. But a growing number of providers are offering more sustainable alternatives, such as green data centers.

Make sure you thoroughly investigate hosting providers before partnering with them. Find out where their energy is sourced from and that it aligns with your values and goals.

Optimize Images

Website images that take up a large amount of space require more resources to process, leading to increased energy consumption. Reducing the file size and resolution of images means they’re optimized so that less resources are required to render them.

Image optimization means that web pages will load more quickly, which also helps to improve the user experience. Photographs can be converted to the WebP format, which results in files that are up to 30% smaller than JPEGs.

For moving images, consider using MP4 as a video file type in place of animated GIFs. This provides a higher quality viewing experience and sizes content much more efficiently. There’s also the added benefit of accessibility features, such as audio description tracks and closed captioning.

Videos can be further optimized by using play buttons instead of an autoplay feature. This ensures that the site only loads content when a user wishes to view it, rather than every time the page is accessed.

Optimize Code

Encouraging developers to adopt environmentally friendly coding practices not only reduces energy consumption. It also minimizes server processing and improves overall website performance, which has a knock-on effect on user experience.

There are a number of ways to achieve this. For instance, you can reduce the number of HTTP requests required to load a webpage by combining and minifying CSS, JavaScript, and other resources.

Similarly, you could minimize the use of plugins and scripts, and remove unused code to streamline page rendering and reduce server processing time. Wherever possible, write clean, concise code. Omit unnecessary elements, libraries, and frameworks that can increase processing time.

Optimize for Mobile

An increasing number of users are accessing websites through mobile devices such as smartphones. It’s important to optimize your website for these users to ensure that it’s as responsive as possible, regardless of how it’s being viewed.

The more a web page is optimized for mobile, the less resources are required to render the page correctly. Hence, the lower the emissions produced.

Optimizing web pages for mobile includes designing navigation with touch screens in mind and ensuring content is easily visible regardless of the screen size it’s being viewed on.

Enable Caching

Enabling caching for your website allows frequently accessed resources, such as images and CSS files, to be stored locally on the user’s device or in intermediate caching layers, such as content delivery networks (CDNs).

When cached content is served directly from the user’s device or a nearby cache server, the load on the origin server is reduced. This results in lower energy consumption, as the origin server needs to process fewer requests.

Caching also helps optimize resource utilization by storing and serving cached content more efficiently. This reduces the need for redundant server processing and resource consumption, leading to lower energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with server operation and data transmission.

Purchase Carbon Offset Credits

No matter how hard you try, it’s unlikely you’ll ever completely negate the carbon emissions generated by your website. Even if you succeed in developing a carbon-neutral website, emissions will still be generated to power the devices that end users access your website through.

It’s still possible to offset these emissions through the purchase of carbon offset credits. However, demand for these has steadily increased as more organizations buy into the idea.

Carbon credits are sold by verified ecological organizations running projects such as reforestation, renewable energy, waste management, and carbon capture and storage (CCS). But be sure to do your due diligence as transparency and accountability issues are common.

Educate and Encourage Sustainable Behavior

Creating a low-carbon website shouldn’t rely solely on your actions, but also on the behaviors of website visitors.

Educate users about the environmental impact of digital activities, and encourage sustainable behavior where possible. This can include reducing unnecessary browsing, using energy-saving modes on devices, and supporting eco-friendly initiatives.

Take steps to explain how you’ve reduced your carbon emissions and how your users can do the same. For example, if you operate a call center in the cloud, explain how the reduction of on-premises technology at your sites has reduced energy consumption across your organization.

Build a Low-Carbon Website and Reduce Your Environmental Impact Today

Building a low-carbon website can be a huge step towards reducing your organization’s digital pollution and environmental footprint. Simple implementations, such as optimizing code, enabling caching, and utilizing renewable energy sources, are great steps. These can all minimize energy consumption and improve website performance, but also demonstrate your company’s commitment to sustainability.

Low-carbon websites not only benefit the environment but also enhance user experience, reduce costs, and strengthen your brand’s reputation for environmental responsibility. By embracing sustainable practices and educating visitors about the importance of environmental conservation, you can contribute to a greener, more sustainable digital future.

About the Author

Francis King is the Head of Demand Generation at OnlyDomains, a domain management solution that offers global services and support that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Francis has been a part of the team since 2009. He is our go-to guy for everything online advertising. Originally from Melbourne, Francis cannot go a day without lifting weights; he is considering taking on Jiu-Jitsu next. Here is his blog.