Maybe this is what finally could push companies towards making lighter and more efficient websites? At least an estimate of a webpages watt usage (server and client side).
Holy cow, that is a lot. 1-3 grams of CO2 per single load of a page? Makes me feel guilty about even clicking the article.
In comparison, leaving a 300W computer setup on for 10 hours each day with coal power is 3KWh or 2.5kg of CO2.
That kind of throughput can be handled by a RaspberryPi, so are we seriously wasting 95%+ of the power budget routing packets and idling servers?
By comparison, average UK cars put out 124.5g for every km driven.
It's not nothing, but it's not a lot either. It probably is worth evaluating the electrical efficiency of the tech industry as a whole, both in terms of highly executed code hotspots and entire pieces of business of questionable utility (ad javascript, cryptocurrency proof-of-waste), but individual web pages are the plastic straws of the industry compared to the giant flare stacks of real problems.
Let's assume each page load is ~1mbit, and it's being served from 1000km away. 1mbit may be low, but most of it will presumably be content delivered by a CDN which is far closer than 1000km.
The reference design (which I work on) for 400G DWDM systems are ~100W for 2 transceivers + EDFA + switches, for a standard 80km link. Assuming we hop every 80km (which should be conservative here), we get 3mJ for the energy through the network. The previous generation is probably 10x worse, so ~30mJ.
Let's add the endpoint too; Wifi router + cable modem (12W or rather 3W marginal power since it's running anyway/ 200mbit) = 15mJ
And finally for the server. I'd hope the server could do 1k requests per second, and that should amortize against backends, etc (2k RPS, but frontend + DB backend server, maybe), maybe 150W for the server, so 150mJ.
This gives us 200mJ for a page load. Using California's current (1:28am) emissions for power generation of 0.274 mT/MWh (it's 1/3rd of this during the day), this yields 15ug/request.
Where do the remaining 5 orders of magnitude come from? What am I missing? If TCO/production energy of the server was included, that couldn't more than double it (capex in a datacenter < opex, and if 100% of the server cost was for energy, we could double, but this is wildly conservative)
I think most of it comes from your client device. Your laptop may be using 50W of power or about 20g of CO2 per hour so reading the article for 6 minutes is ~2g of CO2.
50W for 1 hour : 50Wh or 0.050kWh
California : 187gCO₂eq/kWh according to https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/US-CAL-CISO
-> 9.35gCO₂eq/h -> 0.16g/min -> 0.935g for 6 minutes
There would be a peak for the first seconds, then less than 10W for the rest of the reading time ?
"The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view."
Re-reading it, technically they are right, if "view" is taken in a non-technical fashion. But everyone reading that text would assume if they click refresh, the emissions are doubled.
Also, I do wonder if they take into account bounced users - I would not be surprised if most people only spent 5 or so seconds on the page before moving on.
Proportionally for 2 minutes of course.
According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24068986, that's 1g every 90s, so 4g CO2 for 6 minutes reading time.
But before admonishing users please consider defending Net Neutrality and copyright reforms so that theses workaround become useless (for general usage). And while you are at it don't refrain from taxing ad-networks that use bandwidth and cpu cycle with over-engineered adware!
But nah, better stick to boomers worldviews, Governments and Big Corp can't do nothing for the planet because people are so dumb ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sorry my ironic and rhetorical intentions might not have been clear enough, English is not my mother tongue so I might been confusing here.
Basically my point is that heavy calculation about "X is emitting Y shame on you people" is too often used as decoy so you never actually audit Z.
The government continues to reduce the amount of money they send to the BBC, which continues to produce world-class television and is struggling to find the money to do so.
They've decided that they will no longer offer the complimentary license to the elderly.
None of that should have any bearing on the accuracy of their environmental reporting.
It involves counting carbon from journalists' travel etc. So a full tally (which is good but isn't just about literal pages loaded)
I also wonder how much JS + adverts have to offer as part of that carbon load.
It seemed like every paragraph started with for sure you have been in the waves so you know they are waves
I am not against lighter websites. But it's not gonna happen unless we start pricing carbon.
I hope this becomes more prevalent at least for paid services.