From Websites to Cloud: The widening scope of Greenpixie

Greenpixie are bringing sustainability to the digital world through innovative software which helps organisations measure and reduce their digital carbon emissions. The current focus of our research and development is cloud computing (an umbrella within which so much modern digital activity falls) and this coming week will see the exciting launch of our first cloud emissions solution. However, as those who have heard us speak, worked with us, or followed our journey will know, it hasn’t always been this way.

An evolving journey, exploring digital sustainability

In October 2021, our CTO Will Tinney, ran the first URL through our digital carbon calculator tool at greenpixie.com. Needless to say, it wasn’t the last.

Since then we have estimated the homepages of over 16,000 websites, gathering data on a number of industries and reaching out to thousands of organisations, sharing our results. Understandably shocked, many of these organisations have instructed us to then carry out our full digital carbon report on their website, fully auditing their emissions and accounting for all webpages, as well as traffic.

It’s been quite a journey. Our work has got us noticed around the world and we’ve even been lucky enough to share our story at conferences in London and Paris, where we’ve spoken about the importance of measuring website carbon and how to reduce it.

But, despite this positive impact, we’ve always known we can’t stop there.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t reduce it.” So goes the mantra of our founder and CEO, John, which is why we have worked so hard to provide detailed website reports for organisations to understand their site’s environmental impact. However, digital carbon is not limited to websites alone - far from it.

Email, video calls, gaming, applications, blockchain activity, the metaverse… the list really does go on and on, and emissions linked to the cloud are simply ever increasing. So, we thought, for the world to take steps towards true NetZero, all of these sources of digital carbon will need accounting for.

Revealing a comprehensive digital carbon picture and working towards true NetZero

That’s why the last three months have seen a shift in the Greenpixie R&D focus, away from website-specific measurement and reduction techniques, towards the cloud at large. There is an urgent need for accurate, easy-to-use and widely available software which will reveal the true extent of digital carbon emissions. And that’s exactly what the Greenpixie magic is working on.

You can still get a free estimation of any website’s homepage emissions here on our website. And we’re still offering detailed insights through our full reports, which serve as a fantastic introduction to digital carbon for individuals and organisations alike. After all, this is still an awareness issue as much as anything else.

However, with regulation looming, such as the Sustainable Financial Disclosure Regulation, which will make the measuring of digital carbon mandatory for thousands of businesses in January 2023; our focus is no longer limited to websites.

We are excited to make a series of landmark announcements over the coming weeks, including the opportunity for a first crop of businesses to use, test and provide feedback for a first-of-its-kind MVP, which will change the course of the digital carbon landscape.