Process

While there exist easy and accessible ways to estimate power consumption (and CO₂e emissions) for a webpage on the basis of server infrastructure, location and data transfer, assessing the power consumption of a webpage on the client (somebody's device e.g. a laptop or smartphone) requires more profound knowledge. This prototype aims to simplify this process by providing a proxy that measures power consumption on the client side while loading and using a webpage.

Another speculative component proposal intended to make users think twice before navigating. When clicking on a link, first a small preview popup appears showing CO₂e emissions and data transfer size of the target page. A text-only preview, just like google results, summarizing the content of the target page is shown. By making a user think twice and forcing the user to pause for a moment, some page loads may could be avoided.

This speculative component suggests that instead of loading the full page directly, a reader view is presented first. This view strips away unnecessary elements and only shows the main content of the page in a clean and minimalistic layout. The user can then choose to load the full page if desired.

Speculative proposal for a component that displays the CO₂e emissions of a webpage as a bar at the top of the page. While browsing and loading assets like images, videos, fonts etc., the bar updates dynamically to reflect the current emissions. The goal is to raise awareness about the environmental impact of digital products and services among users.

What does 1g of CO₂e mean? How bad is one single AI prompt for the environment? How does this compare to driving a car or even taking a plane? To sort this mess I tried to start a list of actions (including digital actions) and to give them a “CO₂-price-tag”.

This video prototype illustrates a speculative concept for integrating CO₂e emissions metrics into digital products. By providing users with insights into the environmental impact of their app usage, users may be nudged to make a behavioral change.