Updated November 2024.

Green Tech Radar

A guide to developing the Green Web and Sustainable Software. Read more on Design Mind.

Measurement & Tools

Adopt

31.

Description

Assess the performance of websites and web applications with tools such as Lighthouse, an open-source, automated tool from Google.

What's the impact?

Adopting techniques recommended in Lighthouse's success criteria can help drive more efficient website and web app development. Lighthouse is a standard tool for evaluating many common areas of concern for web development. Specific metrics in these reports (i.e., page weight) can be used to consistently measure and improve during development, improving the sustainability of your site or web application.

Learn more

https://web.dev/measure/

Explore

35.

Description

Make use of subject-matter experts in carbon use, such as GoCode Green, which provide a carbon diagnosis and decisioning platform with reference guides and training materials.

What's the impact?

The ethos and product set of GoCodeGreen is in line with frog's desire to decarbonize our digital products. This is a source of reference for training material, as well as measurement and analysis tools. Using references and techniques such as these is strongly encouraged.

Learn more

https://gocode.green

36.

Description

It's possible to measure and analyze cloud carbon emissions based on cloud usage with a free and open-source tool called Cloud Carbon Footprint.

What's the impact?

By helping to visualize the impact of cloud usage for an app, Cloud Carbon Footprint supports best-practice choices on how and where to use cloud infrastructure. This is an open-source toolset which, when integrated into system monitoring, will show the specific details of how cloud usage is generating carbon. It has integrations to allow the build of standalone apps, run in CI pipelines and create visual dashboards—all good for illustrating the impact of digital estate.

Learn more

https://www.cloudcarbonfootprint.org

37.

Description

Estimate the emissions related to use of the app or website with JavaScript libraries such as CO2.js.

What's the impact?

With CO2.js it's possible to monitor, or even control, emissions related to the app/website. This can be applied multiple ways—from checking and blocking the uploading of carbon intensive files, to presenting users with information about the carbon impact of their online activities, as well as providing dashboards and monitoring tools.

Learn more

https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/co2-js/

38.

Description

There are services available which make it possible to find carbon credits for your purchase journeys, meaning you can sell carbon credits to your customers when this is appropriate.

What's the impact?

Patch.io, for example, provides an API from which carbon credits can be searched for and purchased. This enables a straightforward way to allow for carbon credit purchases in e-commerce journeys.

Learn more

https://www.patch.io/

39.

Description

Websites like Website Carbon Calculator (https://www.websitecarbon.com/) and Ecograder (https://ecograder.com/) estimate the carbon footprint of a webpage. These tools gives a scoring of the energy usage of a page, providing an indication as to whether your web pages are sustainable or wasteful.

What's the impact?

These tools can provide your site with an indicative check of the carbon cost of your web pages. The checks executed by tools of this kind are no substitute for in-house measurements and monitoring of a website's energy usage. When using these tools, it's worth being aware that they can only provide an indicative check.

Learn more

https://www.websitecarbon.com/