Estimating Digital Carbon Emissions workshop

Understanding the environmental impact of digital services

Digital services create carbon emissions through their energy use and infrastructure needs. Louise recently attended a Digital Carbon Emissions workshop hosted by The Green Web Foundation exploring how to estimate, measure and reduce these emissions.

Why Digital Carbon Emissions matter

Digital services make up about 2-4% of global carbon emissions. With new regulations requiring companies to track and report their environmental impact, understanding these emissions has become essential for many organisations.

Examples from the workshop included:

• ABN Amro (Netherlands’ third-largest bank) reports that 40% of their emissions come from digital services
• Salesforce attributes about 50% of its emissions to cloud computing
• Mozilla reports over 98% when including end-user device emissions

How digital services create emissions

Digital services generate carbon emissions through:

1. User devices (phones, laptops, tablets)
2. Data storage and servers
3. Network infrastructure
4. Manufacturing and disposal of hardware

Taking action

Advice from the workshop included:

1. Use green hosting providers
2. Optimise website performance
3. Reduce data transfer sizes
4. Make smart infrastructure choices

The move to measure and reduce digital carbon emissions aligns with wider efforts to reach net-zero emissions by 2030. Organisations can help create a more sustainable internet by making mindful choices about their digital services.

This workshop provided an excellent overview of the reasons why digital carbon emissions are important and how organisations can make a start with measurement.

Louise Towler

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