Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
How green is your Web site?
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With thousands of the world’s most powerful environmental movers and shakers gathered in Bali to figure out next steps in combatting climate change, wouldn’t it be nice if somebody far from the fray, somebody sitting in front of a computer screen — somebody like you — could do something to cut down on the emissions of carbon dioxide that fuel global warming? That’s the idea behind the CO2Stats Project.
This online tool monitors Web sites and blogs for the amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide their visitors emit. Formulated by Alex Wissner-Gross and Tim Sullivan, PhD candidates at Harvard and Yale, respectively, the widget calculates how much power is consumed by all the visitors to a particular site and offsets it for free.
For each pound of carbon dioxide that results from Web traffic to a site where the widget is installed, the project buys carbon offsets from Sustainable Travel International. Users who install the widget pay nothing.
Wissner-Gross and Sullivan aim to make the entire Internet carbon-neutral, a couple of keystrokes at a time; they say the Internet is responsible for more than 100 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually. By contrast, U.S. power plants emit 2.79 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. The CO2Stats own Web site has so far offset less than 2 pounds of carbon. Other sites where the tool is installed show comparable results. The widget’s creators pay out of pocket for the offsets but hope for sponsorship in the future.
To learn more go to http://www.co2stats.com.
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I don’t get it. You are comparing 100 billion pounds (Internet emissions) and 2.79 billion tons (US power plants) which are 20 times heavier.
If the numbers are correct: 100 billion pounds is equivalent to 50 million tons for internet use alone. At current average offset rates ($13.50 per ton) that’s $675 million dollars if they succeed on putting it on everyone’s website. That kind of change should make a difference.
Some web hosts, such as the one I use, already promote carbon-neutrality as among the features of their accounts:
http://www.dreamhost.com/aboutus-green.h tml
You may also be interested in the Carbon Neutral Search engine, recently launched in october, which offsets a minimum of 100g of CO2 for each and every search, covering the 17.57g of CO2 emitted from the search query and the computer use of the searcher …
http://www.carbonneutralsearch.co.uk
I’m using it at my site!
I don’t know. But I don’t use a lot of paper.
“100 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annuall”. OMG that is so much ! But i think that thanks to Internet pretty much tree has been saved …