Photo of Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

Terence Eden’s Blog

Can you meaningfully measure how environmentally friendly a website is?

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Website carbon results for: shkspr.mobi/blog Hurrah! This web page achieves a carbon rating of A. This is cleaner than 82 % of all web pages globally

Think global; act local. That's the mantra, right? I can't stop coal plants belching out suffocating pollutants, but can I ensure my website is as environmentally friendly as possible? There are several services which claim to be able to detect just how lean, green, and clean your website is. But, in my opinion, they're all a bit inadequate. WebsiteCarbon The WebsiteCarbon.com service gives me …

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Experiments with domestic load shedding in the UK

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Screenshot of an email. It says "Hi Terence, You'll earn 1800 OctoPoints – that's £2.25 worth – for every unit of electricity you cut down between 5:00 PM and 6:00 PM on 15th November. Opt in now to save power and earn rewards in this Session. You'll go into a draw to win an extra 400,000 OctoPoints – that's £500 worth! – just for opting in. Important: you need to opt in before the Session starts if you want to earn rewards."

Electricity demand varies throughout the day. When demand is higher, electricity prices go up. Most UK consumers are insulated from this variability - we pay a fixed price per kWh no matter what the actual wholesale cost. But it doesn't need to be this way. Exposing users to the immense variability in pricing is probably too dangerous - as seen in Texas recently. Imagine if your electricity…

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