From Bytes to Trees: How Web Performance Contributes to Sustainability
In today’s digital world, the loading time of websites is an important factor for customer experience. Slow loading times can lead to frustration and bounce rates, while fast loading times can contribute to a positive user experience and higher conversion rates. However, the issue of loading time has an even more massive impact that may not be immediately apparent. We are talking about sustainability. Depending on the study, the internet is now responsible for 2–5% of global CO2 emissions. Between 2015 and 2021, the number of internet users increased by 60%, while web traffic increased by 440%, and this trend is expected to continue, especially due to technologies like AI. If the internet were a country, it would have the 6th largest CO2 emissions after China, USA, India, Russia, and Japan, making it more relevant than global air traffic. Faster loading times mean less power consumption, less CO2 emissions, and thus a huge lever on a global scale. In addition, speed ensures a better customer experience and ideally more revenue.
The problem with slow website loading times
Slow website loading times can be frustrating, especially in a world where we are used to accessing information and services in the blink of an eye.
Various studies have repeatedly addressed the issue of website performance in recent years, each time with very clear results:
- 40% of online users leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load
- 79% of online shoppers are less likely to return if they encounter a slow-loading website
- A 1-second delay in page response can lead to a 7% reduction in conversions.
- If an e-commerce website generates $100,000 in revenue per day, a 1-second delay in page loading could potentially result in a loss of $2.5 million in revenue per year for the site operator.
- Slow loading times can negatively impact a company’s brand image. Users confronted with a slow website are less likely to rate the company positively.
- Loading time has long been a Google ranking criterion, meaning the faster the page loads, the better it is for placement on Google, which in turn can mean more traffic and potentially more revenue. Google also provides a tool called Google PageSpeed Insights to check the performance of a website.
But there is another, less obvious side to this problem:
The environmental impact. If a website loads slowly, it usually means that the corresponding servers and infrastructures have to work longer. This leads to higher energy consumption and a greater burden on the servers and infrastructure that provide this data. As a result, CO2 emissions increase and the ecological footprint of the respective website enlarges or worsens.
The internet as a CO2 “slingshot”
The internet has brought about significant changes in the way we live, work, and communicate. It has turned the world into a global village, enabling people to connect easily, collaborate, and share information. However, this technological progress comes at a price. The internet emits more carbon than ever before, and its impact on our environment cannot be ignored. Current research estimates that the internet is now responsible for around 2.8% of global CO2 emissions — and this trend is rising.
While the internet is now reducing the power consumption of many analog industries, the current networking of so many people and devices, and the AI hype, are leading to a further increase, meaning that global communication is expected to generate more CO2 emissions by 2025 than any country — except for China, India, and the USA.
For Germany alone, this means an annual energy consumption of the internet (operation of networks and data centers) of 13 TWh/year, according to an analysis by Statista. For comparison: the electricity consumption of all private households in Munich is about 2.5 TWh/year. And the CO2 emissions of the internet will continue to increase for the following reasons:
- Increasing data consumption
- Streaming services
- Increasing use of cloud services
- Cryptocurrency mining
- Increased use of artificial intelligence
The training of GPT-3 alone consumed 1.287 gigawatt-hours, according to a research paper published in 2021 — the electricity consumption of 120 US households in a year. That’s 502 tons of carbon emissions, about as much as 110 American cars emit per year.
Current estimates suggest that the use of artificial intelligence could have increased so much by 2027 that the world’s AI data centers together will consume between 85 and 134 terawatt-hours of electricity per year — as much as the entire annual electricity demand of Sweden, Argentina, or the Netherlands.
Anders S.G. Andrae from Huawei had already published a paper in 2020 titled “New Perspective on internet electricity use in 2030”. According to this, it is expected that electricity consumption, with the exception of wireless access networks, could generally decrease, but the massive increase in data traffic — and this analysis did not yet take into account the current AI hype in this form — will overcompensate for this development.
The environmental aspect of website loading times
The internet already consumes a significant amount of energy. In particular, data centers that host websites and services require large amounts of electricity to keep servers running and provide the necessary cooling. A study by the Shift Project estimated the internet’s share of global energy consumption in 2019 at about 3.7 percent.
When websites load more slowly, servers have to operate longer to transfer the data, leading to higher energy consumption. This in turn increases the emission of greenhouse gases such as CO2.
According to data from websitecarbon.com, an average of 0.5 grams of CO2 is emitted per page view. For a website with 100,000 monthly page views, that’s 600 kg of CO2 per year. Current estimates put the number of internet users worldwide at around 5.5 billion, with a strong upward trend.
Since there is a strong correlation on the one hand between the page size (storage requirements) of a website and energy consumption, but on the other hand the average size of a website has also increased massively over the years and according to Archive.org is now at around 2.5 MB for desktop and 2.2 MB for mobile pages, it becomes clear that reducing loading time means a huge lever.
Determining the CO2 friendliness of a website
The CO2 friendliness of a website can be determined by various methods. One option is to use a CO2 calculator. CO2 calculators take into account various factors that influence the CO2 emissions of a website, such as the size of the website, the number of images and videos, the type of hosting providers used, and the number of page views. However, caution should be exercised here. When calculating the energy requirements on the web, very different results are often given. Tom Greenwood explained why this is the case in a quite interesting article. For a rough assessment, CO2 calculators are quite suitable.
CO2 calculators
There are a number of CO2 calculators available online. These calculators can be used to determine the CO2 emissions of a website. Below are some examples:
- https://www.websitecarbon.com/
- https://greenpixie.com/website-carbon-calculator https://websiteemissions.com/
- https://ecograder.com/
Guidelines and standards
Another way to determine the CO2 friendliness of a website is to use guidelines and standards. There are various organizations that have developed guidelines and standards for sustainable web design. These guidelines and standards take into account various factors that influence the CO2 emissions of a website. There are various organizations that have developed guidelines and standards for sustainable web design. Below are some examples:
- The Green Web Foundation: The Green Web Foundation is a non-profit organization that advocates for sustainable web design. The Green Web Foundation has developed an online tool to check whether a website is powered by green energy. There is also a list of certified hosts worldwide.
- Sustainable Web Manifesto: To create a sustainable internet together, the “Sustainable Web Manifesto” was launched, which includes the following demands: Clean, Efficient, Open, Honest, Regenerative, Resilient
- NEW: “Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) 1.0”: The W3C is an international organization that advocates for the development of standards for the World Wide Web. The W3C has developed a guideline for sustainable web design. This hides a wide range of recommendations to make websites and digital products more sustainable. The following link provides a structured version of WSG 1.0 in the latest version: https://w3c.github.io/sustyweb/glance.html
Measures to reduce the CO2 emissions of websites
There are a number of measures that companies can take to reduce the CO2 emissions of their websites. These include:
- Use of energy-efficient servers: Energy-efficient servers consume less electricity than conventional servers, thus causing less CO2 emissions. Alternatively: Use of an external and sustainable hosting provider.
- Considerate use of third-party technologies. Over 94% of websites use at least one third-party resource such as scripts for tracking, social media, tag managers, videos, etc. These are responsible for over 45% of website requests (2021 Web Almanac: Third Parties). This is a considerable part of the entire website traffic.
- Use of sustainable hosting providers: Sustainable hosting providers use renewable energies and operate their servers efficiently. This can be checked via the following link: https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org
- Data compression: Compressed data requires less storage space and bandwidth than uncompressed data. There are various tools that can help you with this, such as tinypng.de or Photoshop. In addition, you can further reduce the file size while maintaining resolution by using smaller image formats such as WebP and AVIF.
- Use of technologies that enable the most efficient delivery of the website, e.g. https://www.aem.live/home as well as consideration of the recommendations from the Web Sustainability Guidelines. The performance of a website can be regularly checked via Google Pagespeed Insights. The higher the value (max. 100 points), the faster the loading time and the more CO2-friendly the website.
- Use of sustainable design and development practices: There are a number of sustainable design and development practices that can reduce the CO2 emissions of websites. These include, for example, the use of less energy-intensive colors. A few initial tips can be found on the website of the Eco-Friendly Web Alliance and at Mozilla. In addition, the book “Sustainable Web Design” by Tom Greenwood can be recommended at this point.
The special thing about the topic of more sustainable websites: Two birds can be killed with one stone. By implementing these measures, companies can contribute to climate protection and at the same time improve the performance and user-friendliness of their websites, thus ensuring a better customer experience.
Adobe’s approach with Edge Delivery Services
With the so-called Edge Delivery Services as part of the Experience Manager, Adobe has recently ushered in a new era of content management — simpler, faster, and even more customer-oriented with the primary goal of providing the best possible customer experience for both editors and end customers. In addition to the easiest operation, the focus is on performance, and as a “by-product”, the technology also ensures a significant improvement in terms of sustainability through extremely fast loading times and thus significantly lower power consumption.
These effects can be displayed at any time via Google PageSpeed Insights after entering the respective URL. Google has introduced several KPIs for this purpose, with which the performance of a website is evaluated and which are summarized under the so-called Web Vitals. These include, among others:
Adobe addresses all relevant Web Vital parameters with the Edge Delivery Services, ensuring loading times that were hardly possible before.
Adobe has published a current customer case on this topic. Hanesbrands Inc. is a US-based apparel manufacturer headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, primarily selling underwear such as underpants, socks, bras, and simple T-shirts. The company employs around 67,000 people and generates a turnover of just under 7 billion USD. The company’s brands include Champion (streetwear), Elbeo (stockings), Maidenform (shapewear), Wonderbra (push-up bras), SHOCK ABSORBER (sports bras), NUR DIE (women’s underwear), and NUR DER (men’s underwear).
Hanesbrands decided to collaborate with Adobe to launch the Maidenform webshop based on Adobe Edge Delivery Services, aiming to achieve the best possible performance (loading time). The project was realized based on Adobe Experience Manager in combination with Adobe Commerce, and the final result is more than impressive. Regular analysis using Google Page Speed Insights yields scores between 95 and 100 points, which is enormous for an e-commerce site.
A nice side effect: The fast loading times significantly reduce the energy required to deliver the web pages, which has an extremely positive impact on CO2 emissions. Due to the extremely positive experiences from the relaunch, Hanesbrands plans to gradually switch the other brand websites or webshops to the new Adobe technology in a next step, with the well-known sports brand Champion being next on the agenda.
Conclusion
Web page loading times may seem like a technical issue at first glance, but they actually have far-reaching impacts on the environment. If the internet were a country, it would have the 6th largest CO2 emissions after China, USA, India, Russia, and Japan, making it more relevant than global air traffic.
A faster internet that consumes less energy, or more performant websites, can help significantly reduce the ecological footprint of the internet in general and of individual website operators and thus companies in particular.
Companies and users alike play an important role in bringing about positive change by focusing more on the following aspects:
- Climate-friendly, green hosting
- As fast loading times as possible
- Sustainable design and development practices
- Use of performance-enhancing technologies
Due to the increasing data traffic, among other things through artificial intelligence, a counterweight must be created in the future to enable the achievement of climate goals. By advocating for faster and more sustainable website loading times, we can help make the internet a greener place while at the same time improving the customer experience. Ecological action, which according to a study by McKinsey can also have a positive impact on sales — all without greenwashing!
In a nutshell: Faster loading times mean less power consumption, thus fewer CO2 emissions, and globally speaking, an enormous lever. In addition, speed ensures a better customer experience and ideally more sales.
If you have questions about website performance or performance optimization and/or Adobe Experience Manager as a future-oriented digital experience platform, or if you are looking for support, we are happy to help at www.techdivision.com.
