You can find the Website Carbon Calculator here to try for yourself. This will give you a glimpse into your website’s eco-friendliness. But don’t be fooled, this check has a lot of limitations.
The results for my website are quite respectable, even though it was not really optimized for it. But, to be honest, the bigger impact would probably be not running this private blog, as it is only a fun project.
How it works
The web hosting needs to be identifiable by an IP lookup. This means that using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) effectively hides the IP of the origin, making it difficult to determine if green hosting is being used. Additionally, the hosting needs to be registered with thegreenwebfoundation.org in order to be recognized as green hosting.
On the thegreenwebfoundation.org you can also “test” or actually look up if your hosting provider is signed up as a hosting provider running on green energy.
The service is also offering a badge for the website.
This is the live version of the website.
This website is hosted Green - checked by thegreenwebfoundation.orgCalculating Digital Emissions
Calculating the carbon footprint of digital services is a complex task due to the difficulty in defining system boundaries and the various factors affecting energy use, which can result in significant margins of error. A standardized formula has been developed that uses kWh/GB as a key metric and segments the system into consumer device use, network use, data center use, and hardware production, each contributing differently to the overall emissions. You can find more information about these challenges in detail here: Calculating Digital Emissions
Update: Rating System
The recent update mainly includes a change aimed at simplifying the understanding of the rating system. Websites are now rated on a scale from A+ to F, making it easy to determine the energy efficiency of a website.
Read more details here: Digital Carbon Ratings
This type of rating is already quite common on the web. A variety of security scanning engines use and rate based on the same scale.