Low Tech

The internet consumes a lot of electricity. 416.2TWh per year to be precise. To give you some perspective, that’s more than the entire United Kingdom.

From data centers to transmission networks to the devices that we hold in our hands, it is all consuming electricity, and in turn producing carbon emissions.

The average website produces 1.76 grams of CO2 per page view. For a website with 10,000 monthly page views, that’s 211 kg of CO2 per year.

This blog only produces 0.37kg of CO2 per year, or 570 times less than the average website. To do so, it leverages different techniques:

• no JavaScript. This website is static, it does not require any JavaScript to be displayed. This make every pages a lot lighter.
• no 3rd party tracking, no ads.
• every image is heavily compressed and black and white. This reduces the size of the images by as much as 80%.
• local cache. Once a user has visited the website, the pages are cached locally.

Obviously this website is really simple, but the techniques used to make it greener can be generalized.

For more information, check out:

• Gatsby Low Tech Blog Starter Sources
• Low Tech Magazine
• Website Energy Efficiency
• The Green Web Foundation
• Offset Earth