Understanding website carbon footprints: How does your energy provider rank

Although it is hard to imagine, the internet has a vast carbon footprint - estimated to be nearly 4% of all global carbon emissions.

And each and every website that you visit contributes in some way to that figure.

In this article, we explain why the internet has a carbon footprint, what we've done to make our website green, and how we compare with other energy providers.

Every website on the internet has a carbon footprint. That carbon footprint comes from three main sources:

• Manufacturing and running the devices you use to surf the internet.

• Building and maintaining the transmission networks that provide WIFI and 4G coverage.

• Powering the data centres that host each and every web page.

When it came to redesigning the Good Energy website, keeping its carbon emissions as low as possible was one of our main priorities. We think this reflects what our customers expect from us as a renewable energy supplier, too.

Working with sustainable website agency, Wholegrain Digital, here are some of the things we have put in place to keep our website emissions lower than 86% of other sites.

• The data centre that hosts our site is powered by 100% renewable electricity.
• Our website uses compressed images, reduced video and lightweight fonts - this brings our average page size down to 30% of the global average.
• We've built the site with simple web architecture, and use clean code and simple file formats.
• Each page has a website carbon badge in the corner to raise awareness.

It might surprise you which energy suppliers have the cleanest websites. It's not the companies that focus on green credentials in other aspects of their work.

Using websitecarbon.com, we discovered that after Good Energy, the energy supplier with the next cleanest website is British Gas. While the company's website is hosted on a data centre powered by the standard UK fuel mix, its efficient design and clean code make it cleaner than 79% of other tested web pages.

On the other end of the spectrum is Scottish Power, Octopus Energy and Ovo which are dirtier than 86%, 68% and 65% of tested webpages.

Here's how your energy supplier ranks:

Website carbon footprintshould be a key consideration for all companies, particularly ones that provide digital customer service. At Good Energy, we've taken proactive steps to minimise our website's carbon emissions; and would encourage other suppliers to do the same as we transition to a net zero economy.