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🌿 Improved carbon tracking

Thu, 25 Jun 2020

We're constantly working on improving the carbon analysis tracking. We've now incorporated the inspect view in a popup within the dashboard. Soon we will introduce a simpified page score based on the most popular sites on the web.

How does carbon tracking work?

Carbon tracking works by analysing all the files loaded on your website to calculate a total bytes loaded. Your page is only checked if:

It receives page views.
It has been longer than 3 days since the last check.
It has been modified. We know this by checking the page header last-modified and comparing the html against our last saved hash. This way we can save energy by skipping unnecessary assets if they haven't changed.

Determining how many bytes a visitor loads

Once we have a total bytes for your page we determine how much a visitor might have loaded by assigning them a percentage.

Their first visit - 100%
Their first visit to the page, but not to your domain - 50%
Not their first visit to the page - 5%

Our carbon calculations essentially take the same approach as websitecarbon.com with a few tweaks.

Read how it works

Calculating Energy per kWh

Energy = bytes * (1.805kWh / 1e9 bytes)
Note: we use base 10 therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. Data taken from On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030

Calculating Carbon per kWh

CO2 = Energy * 475 gCO2/kWh
Carbon estimates differ across regions of the world. In the UK, estimates range from 283 gCO2/kWh , 309g, 365g, and 488g. In the US around 449g.

We take the most up to date estimate of 475g from IEA Emissions – Global Energy & CO2 Status Report 2019

Green hosts

CO2 = (Energy * 0.1 * 33.4 gCO2/kWh)
+ (Energy * 0.9 * 475 gCO2/kWh)
We check your website against The Green Web Foundation API to determine if you are using a green host. If it is, we reduce 10% of the energy used to 33.4g to account for the data center.

If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions please get in touch at hello@withcabin.com