Measure and report on the carbon impact of a website

[jmcook1186]

Please use this template to suggest an idea that people can try to implement as part of Carbon Hack 24. Provide as much detail as possible. If someone else submitted an idea but you feel you can do a better job of explaining, please go ahead and submit again.

Prize category

Help the participant understand which of the prize categories this idea would best fit

• Best Model
• Best Content
• Beyond Carbon
• Best contribution to the framework

User Story

As a web developer I want to know how much carbon is consumed when people visit my website.

Rationale

The carbon impact of a website is the result of the deployment and hosting infrastructure and the cost of serving the website content. These can be calculated using existing models in the IF repositories. However, calculating the impact of a real website requires carefully configuring the manifest file and choosing the right models as well as finding accurate input data. The manifest file and the resulting data could be used to form the basis of an accessible report/article on web sustainability that could include recommendations for good green practise.

Impact

If this idea is successful implemented then the IF will be producing actionable insights for a real world product.

Implementation guidelines

• The manifest file MUST run successfully using the IF
• The report MUST draw on data or insights derived from the IF output data

Difficulty

2/5

Scope Of Work

List some of the tasks that will be required to implement this idea

• A new model plugin
• A new feature in an existing model plugin
• A manifest file will have to be written
• Implement test cases
• A new feature to the framework itself (the cli tool)
• It will require changes to the documentation

Examples and resources

Provide any links to prior discussions, similar code, examples, pseudocode, diagrams or anything else than can help the hacker understand the task

Manifest File

The following manifest file is a demo that shows a valid structure - you will need to update it for your website!

name: nesting-demo
description:
tags:
  kind: web
  complexity: moderate
  category: on-premise
initialize:
  models:
    - name: teads-curve
      model: TeadsCurveModel
      path: "@grnsft/if-unofficial-models"
    - name: sci-e
      model: SciEModel
      path: "@grnsft/if-models"
    - name: sci-m
      path: "@grnsft/if-models"
      model: SciMModel
    - name: sci-o
      model: SciOModel
      path: "@grnsft/if-models"
    - name: sci
      model: SciModel
      path: "@grnsft/if-models"
graph:
  children:
    child: # an advanced grouping node
      pipeline:
        - teads-curve
        - sci-e
        - sci-m
        - sci-o
        - sci
      config:
        teads-curve:
          thermal-design-power: 65
        sci-m:
          total-embodied-emissions: 251000 # gCO2eq
          time-reserved: 3600 # 1 hour in s
          expected-lifespan: 126144000 # 4 years in seconds    
          resources-reserved: 1 
          total-resources: 1 
        sci-o:
          grid-carbon-intensity: 457 # gCO2/kwh
        sci:
          functional-unit-duration: 1 
          functional-duration-time: ''
          functional-unit: requests # factor to convert per time to per f.unit
      children:
        child-1:
          inputs:
            - timestamp: 2023-07-06T00:00
              duration: 10
              cpu-util: 50
              e-net: 0.000811 #kwh     
              requests: 380
        child-2:
          inputs: 
            - timestamp: 2023-07-06T00:00
              duration: 10
              cpu-util: 33
              e-net: 0.000811 #kwh     
              requests: 380

[alexzurbonsen]

Thanks for the nice description. I am intending to work on this issue. One question: You write

These can be calculated using existing models in the IF repositories.

I see there is the CO2.js model, but aren't there models missing to check for the page size and green hosting? Or did you have in mind to use the shell model for that?

[jmcook1186]

Hi - we do not have those plugins available - you'd have to develop something to fill that gap. Our standard library of plugins can take you from energy to carbon or SCI, so the main challenge really is building the plugins that take you from your observable metrics to energy.

[alexzurbonsen]

Thanks @jmcook1186! We also figured that and developed some plugins (still in process...)

[alexzurbonsen]

One further question: I have been writing a lighthouse model to get some page analytics going. But unfortunately lighthouse is an ESM package and incompatible with IF's CommonJS approach (same for sitespeed.io I guess).

Do you have some insight on whether CommonJS was an intentional design choice or is necessary for any reason? I tried to transform IF into an ESM package and it seems to go okayish... The main issue is that dynamic global imports do not seem to be possible with ESM node modules. So you need to handle plugin installs in a different way.

[jmcook1186]

pinging @narekhovhannisyan!

[mheaversmozilla]

@jmcook1186 - I'm trying to get folks from my company, Mozilla, to participate in the Hackathon for Earth Week (month / century?). I think approaching them wth a specific challenge to solve might make it easier to recruit - so Ii'm thinking this might be one that would make sense to try and solve. We've done a lot of work around CO2e measurement within the Firefox Profiler in collaboration with the Green Web Foundation. Curious your thoughts here. Does this seem like a good lane for folks from Mozilla if I can get them to participate? Or is there something else more pressing / relevant that comes to mind.

[jmcook1186]

Hi - thanks a lot for your interest - this sounds like a very good entry point into IF - we have spoken internally about environmental impacts of websites several times (including a ticket that has sat on our backlog for quite a while to analyze our own website) but we don't currently have any specific tooling or even any manifests that actually achieve it, so anything you can deliver along these lines would be very welcome!