On a daily basis, I think of digital products as clean, energy-less objects. They are smooth and slick, polished like shiny rocks and flat front sides. The process of making them is hidden from us. They don’t look like they emerged from the dirty, messy murk of mines, machinery and masks.
But it takes a tremendous amount of energy to make the devices you are using to read this on — phones, desktops, laptops, tablets, and wearables. And it takes a lot of energy to power them, too.
The homepage of this website uses up 1.4g of CO2 equivalent every time it loads, receiving a carbon rating of B from my colleagues who run Website Carbon. The site shrinks image sizes with Ghost and I'm using as little code and other assets as possible. The net outcome is a fast, easy-to-use and green website.
As someone who very early started thinking about the digital — and carbon — footprint of personal and business work, I created the website Serving.Green with my team at Manoverboard along with partners Mightybytes and Third Partners in 2016. Low energy websites, digital sustainability and digital responsibility are increasingly important factors in conversations about design.
Websites, social media, AI, and web platforms and apps use a tremendous amount of energy. From the Sustainable Web Manifesto:
If the internet was a country it would be the 13th largest emitter between Mexico and Brazil.
Here’s what I did to reduce the energy footprint of this site.
- Images are converted from JPEG and PNG format to WebP (with smaller file sizes) automatically through the Ghost platform.
- A minimum number of typefaces are used.
- There is very little fancy animation or video on the site.
- I delete old files from this site to prevent servers from backing them up.
- The site is hosted in European datacenters through Magic Pages, which runs on 100% renewable energy.
If you have any questions about sustainability or this site, please contact me.
Updated: 10 July 2026
