The increasing size and usage of websites have a direct and growing impact on global energy consumption and the climate.
The average website is four times larger than a decade ago, and data centers now account for a significant percentage of national energy usage.
Increased daily screen time, the shift to mobile-first browsing, and the rise of e-commerce are key drivers of higher internet data consumption.
Large JavaScript bundles not only create slow user experiences by consuming bandwidth but also strain device CPUs, increasing energy use on both ends.
A look back at websites from a decade ago reveals a shift from simple text and low-res images to today's media-rich, interactive, and heavier applications.
Web development has evolved from using jQuery for simple interactions to building entire applications with powerful but heavier frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue.
Tools like Website Carbon estimate a site's environmental impact by analyzing data transfer, CPU intensity, and the data center's energy source.
Analyzing a deliberately heavy website with a 10MB bundle reveals a massive carbon footprint, equivalent to driving an electric car for thousands of kilometers.
In contrast, a simple static HTML site with a tiny 20KB footprint is shown to be extremely energy-efficient, requiring almost no carbon offset.
Building websites with static site generators (SSGs) and the Jamstack architecture pre-renders pages, resulting in smaller bundles and faster performance.
The Jamstack decouples the frontend from backend services, and incremental static generation (ISG) optimizes build times for very large sites.
Implementing server-side compression like Gzip, and especially the more efficient Brotli, significantly reduces the amount of data transferred to the user.
Code splitting with dynamic imports and lazy loading components ensures that users only download the JavaScript they need for the current view.
The final step in reducing a website's environmental impact is to host it in a data center that is powered by renewable, green energy sources.
Sensory-Minds GmbH
Offenbach am Main, Germany
51:10Laurie Voss
50:10M4dz
14:44Chris Heilmann
30:07Ines Akrap
32:56Laurie Voss
1:05:49Lorenzo Pieri
26:20Stephen Cooper
42:04Tamas Piros
Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.
YoungCapital
Hoofddorp, Netherlands
Urban Linker
Paris, France
konfetti GmbH
Berlin, Germany
Lightspeed
Ghent, Belgium
