Australia's Most Visited Sites Ranked By CO2 Emissions
New analysis of Australia’s most visited news sites by human experience agency WongDoody has uncovered and ranked CO2 emissions generated by their like the home page of a website alone draws attention to the impact of sustainable thinking and brand approach in our digital world.
The analysis assessed 15 pages from each of the top 10 most popular news websites, which includes some of Australia’s top news outlets and a handful of global brands for comparison. The digital experts analysed the use of imagery, fonts, ad tracking, auto-play videos, and forced scrolls to determine the carbon emissions generated by a single site visit.
The WongDoody team then calculated the annual carbon footprint of each site based on organic web traffic data. For Australian sites, this averaged out at 85 tonnes of CO2 annually, and for the global news sites included, this reached 1728 tonnes thanks to their large volumes of web traffic.
The news sites assessed were 73% more polluting than the average website, showing that the way news websites are designed and powered could be significantly improved. Especially given digital activities contribute 3.7% of global emissions - as much as the entire aviation industry.
News Outlet | CO2 produced per homepage visit (grams) | Homepage monthly visits (average) | Yearly carbon footprint | More or less polluting than all websites by |
1. 9 News | 1.34 | 5,114,777 | 145.5 | +82% |
2. The Australian | 1.32 | 1,107,981 | 45.6 | +82% |
3. ABC News (Australia) | 1.18 | 14,484,438 | 184.3 | +79% |
4. The Age | 1.12 | 2,510,434 | 35.1 | +78% |
5. Sydney Morning Herald | 1.04 | 4,645,649 | 55.8 | +76% |
6. News.com.au | 0.99 | 8,543,850 | 87.2 | +75% |
7. The Financial Review | 0.88 | 1,335,165 | 14.0 | +72% |
8. The Guardian (Australia) | 0.71 | 9,071,466 | 110.0 | +65% |
9. Daily Mail UK (Global) | 0.64 | 107,110,462 | 1284.6 | +61% |
10. Yahoo (Global)* | 0.39 | 526,324,195 | 2172.2 | +58% |
Average | 0.96 | 68,024,842 | 413.4 | +73% |
Ranking based on CO2 produced by the homepage, with sites using renewables upweighted.
The Atmosfair emission calculator puts a one-way flight from Sydney to LAX at an average of 4.64 tonnes in carbon emissions – meaning the average Australian news brand clocks up the equivalent of 9 of these flights per year in carbon. For further context, the average Australian has a carbon footprint of 14.3 tonnes per year.
James Noble, chief experience officer at Wongdoody, said, “It’s easy to think of digital options as greener – especially in journalism where we think of replacing paper and ink with a website as a better environmental option.
“People often don’t realise the internet has its own carbon footprint, with the impact of our digital industries equal to that of the aviation industry. Terms like “the cloud” are misleading. A huge amount of power goes into the servers that support that, with many of them being cooled in our oceans. It’s how Tasmania’s internet got famously eaten by a shark.
“While we’ve used the news sector as an example, the problem is much broader. Any website that has too many images runs on unsustainable servers and has a huge amount of traffic will physically impact the world.
In addition, the introduction of generative AI will exacerbate the problem, as current estimates suggest that the carbon footprint of an AI query is five times greater than that of a normal search.
“While it’s not top of mind, the creation of a swagged-out Pope using AI does have a carbon footprint, and it’s incumbent on us all to be more aware of that impact as we operate in an increasingly digital world,” James said.
Businesses can decrease the amount of greenhouse emissions released by adopting sustainable design. This includes using current image formats and content delivery methods, limiting ad-tracking and auto-play videos, avoiding storing old content and assessing how energy-intensive your fonts and colours are.
“It’s all about how much energy it takes to power a site; some of that’s relatively easy to see. If there’s lots of stuff moving and playing, and you see that wheel spin after the content has loaded as it contacts all the ad servers – it’s probably intensive, so it’s best to at least power it with renewables.
“The next step is to look at ways of delivering the same level of user experience without the high energy requirement, which is where good, sustainable design comes in.”
