Plus, it ignores that most websites couldn’t reliably tell you how much carbon emissions they’d be responsible for individually. That’s a super-complicated question to answer.
Part of the issue is that electricity is fungible. If I consume one watt-hour from my grid, I don’t get to decide where it comes from. The mix of generation is the same for everyone on that grid. Even if you segregate the grids in order to vaguely guarantee that you are only consuming green sources, you’re also making the “dirty” grid cheaper and thus easier for everyone else to use, and there are plenty of ways of capitalizing on that difference that nullifies the segregation. It’s a bit like arbitrage.
A website managed by a person working from home are way greener than a website managed from an office, I hope they include that in their green certification
I mean you put it as a generic thing which means it’s independent of other details, including a “way” so you suggest it’s a significant difference clearly. This must be based on detailed data or research, right? Care to share that?
Because otherwise, I have a few questions:
Is the whole supply chain included? Developer, Ops, Admin, Data Center, cabling, everything? Or just the legally mentioned admin on the page, respectively the lawyer?
What if the page from home (and the whole home!) is running on hardware that gets electricity from fossil fuels + cooks with gas while the office and it’s page all run on renewables?
What if the page deployed from home is written extremely ineffective, so it uses multiple times more electricity?
What if the office in question is the back office of a pet shop? Or a supermarket? Or a DIY superstore? They’d heat the place either way, so why not also deploy the website from there?
And don’t get me wrong, I’m a staunch supporter of closing down offices as possible. But generalizations such as these help no one, and also just like the OP completely miss the point of talking about carbin emissions and climate impacts.
Yeah but that’s making the assumption that someone drives to the office.
And also immediately points the finger at car-based single-person traffic, not office-based work. And I want offices closed down as possible, so please keep the finger on them. 😛
So you have two identical websites, down to the cable materials, distance of workers and everything else. Basically a 1 to 1 clone. One website has one person not going to office to manage the site, the other website does not. Even if that person is only WFH one day a year compared to the other that is two trips not driven.
Many people here in Sweden that doesn’t live in a big city has quite some distance to work with no viable mass transit options (you are no longer allowed to ride on the school busses where I live which means that the closest bus station is 18 km from me) which requires a car.
Most of our electricity comes from water with other renewables constantly developing, so I don’t think the electricity source would matter much since it’s not server hosting.
Edit: my first post was also in jest while agreeing with it being super complicated with an almost infinite amount of hard to measure variables to boil down to a single digit or letter
Greenwashing, can’t believe this even is a question
Plus, it ignores that most websites couldn’t reliably tell you how much carbon emissions they’d be responsible for individually. That’s a super-complicated question to answer.
Part of the issue is that electricity is fungible. If I consume one watt-hour from my grid, I don’t get to decide where it comes from. The mix of generation is the same for everyone on that grid. Even if you segregate the grids in order to vaguely guarantee that you are only consuming green sources, you’re also making the “dirty” grid cheaper and thus easier for everyone else to use, and there are plenty of ways of capitalizing on that difference that nullifies the segregation. It’s a bit like arbitrage.
A website managed by a person working from home are way greener than a website managed from an office, I hope they include that in their green certification
How so?
I mean you put it as a generic thing which means it’s independent of other details, including a “way” so you suggest it’s a significant difference clearly. This must be based on detailed data or research, right? Care to share that?
Because otherwise, I have a few questions:
And don’t get me wrong, I’m a staunch supporter of closing down offices as possible. But generalizations such as these help no one, and also just like the OP completely miss the point of talking about carbin emissions and climate impacts.
I don’t think anything could outweigh the carbon emissions of having to drive to the office.
Yeah but that’s making the assumption that someone drives to the office.
And also immediately points the finger at car-based single-person traffic, not office-based work. And I want offices closed down as possible, so please keep the finger on them. 😛
Single car traffic is sadly intertwined with working-on-location where I live
Carpooling or using a bike works far better than you think, compared to an idiot driving a SUV in a city.
So you have two identical websites, down to the cable materials, distance of workers and everything else. Basically a 1 to 1 clone. One website has one person not going to office to manage the site, the other website does not. Even if that person is only WFH one day a year compared to the other that is two trips not driven.
Many people here in Sweden that doesn’t live in a big city has quite some distance to work with no viable mass transit options (you are no longer allowed to ride on the school busses where I live which means that the closest bus station is 18 km from me) which requires a car.
Most of our electricity comes from water with other renewables constantly developing, so I don’t think the electricity source would matter much since it’s not server hosting.
Edit: my first post was also in jest while agreeing with it being super complicated with an almost infinite amount of hard to measure variables to boil down to a single digit or letter
Aaaah, yes, if we assume everything else to be equal, then of course having the admin work from home makes a positive impact.
Personally I hope those mouth breathers save some carbon for the rest of us. Green Certification is a complete joke.