Last summer, we posted about beginning work on SCI for Web, a new standard for measuring the carbon emissions that come from using digital services. Green Web Foundation Director of Tech and Policy Chris Adams gives an update on where we are now, and where it’s going next.
A quick recap – creating a special web-focussed variant of an existing ISO standard.
As members of the industry body the Green Software Foundation, we were leading on the SCI for Web project, and had brokered a special memorandum of understanding between the GSF and the World Wide Web Consortium, the web standards group that acts as the custodian of web technologies like HTML, CSS, and some parts of Javascript.
Within the W3C, there has been an ongoing project, the Web Sustainability Guidelines, and we wanted them to be complementary efforts that support each other, rather than competing ones that don’t. For this to be possible we had to establish a two way flow of information between the organisations, and this was part of the special agreement that had to be set up.
Back then, here’s what we said:
The idea behind a Software Carbon Intensity for Web is to create a tighter, more focussed version that is still compatible with the existing Software Carbon Intensity standard. To be more specific, it will still take into account:
- the amount of electricity used to run software
- the carbon intensity of that electricity
- the embodied carbon in the hardware that software runs on
- the functional unit (i.e. visiting a web page, performing a search, and so on)
However it will be more tightly focussed on the majority of use-cases found on the web; it will be clearer about the properties of reference devices that might be used (i.e. their age, how powerful they are, etc). It will also provide more guidance on what a physical measuring setup to might need to look like for making credible claims about the carbon footprint of software.
The first outcome – a consensus report listing who the standard is for, what we are trying to achieve with it, with buy-in from nonprofits, academics and even tech giants
Instead of diving straight into a writing spec though, the first part was to get a document setting out in detail who the intended audiences of this standard are, the specific behaviour we’re looking incentivise, some principles to drive decision making in the group, and so on.
It’s quite a long document, but sections are linked, so if you want to see what we agreed should be behaviour this spec incentivises, you can dive straight to that section. Similarly, if you want to see the specific personas this standard is for, there’s a helpful section for that too.
Normally standard development discussions inside the Green Software Foundation are carried out in closed groups, but one of the agreements we made was to share snapshots of the spec, and information about the process to the W3C’s Sustainability focussed group the Sustainable Web Interest Group on a regular basis.
You can see a pull request on github showing an early version of this document, shared for feedback, and in January, the final version of this document, a SCI for Web Assembly Report went live, for the world to see and respond to.
You can also see the people and companies involved, and this is a consensus document with buy-in from all the organisations listed, from small nonprofits like us, to academic institutions, and even massive tech companies.
The next step – developing the spec itself
In April this year, we began on stage two, creating an actual, usable spec from this document.
Over the summer, we’ll be developing a specification document, intended for people building tools and software for measuring the electricity and carbon emissions from software to be able to implement, so they can demonstrate compatibility with the SCI for Web Standard.
As before, along the way, while the deliberation is a closed group, we’ll be sharing public snapshots for input. You can see the most recent one in this pull request to the W3C’s Sustainable Web Guidelines repo on github.
In the plan is both a very early snapshot of the spec, along with details about what areas we’ll be covering with the spec – see the assembly plan document for more detail.
Note: Please do not try to use these snapshots as a basis for building software – lots of detail from that snapshot that is now already out of date.
At present, the goal is to have a working version of a spec around early Q4, and a priority we have as an organisation deeply involved in the process is having working software that implements it, that people can use.
Once we have a working version of the spec, there is a path to turn it into an ISO standard, similar to how the original Software Carbon Intensity spec became an international ISO standard.
How to stay up to date as the standard develops
As mentioned above, the goal is to publish regular snapshots and use the same sharing mechanism with the W3C Sustainable Web Interest Group as a way to make sure information is in the public domain.
If you’re building software that tracks the environmental impact of web applications, website and services, the fastest way to can get in touch is via our contact form, and following content feeds – either via our website’s RSS feed, our presence on Linkedin, or our newsletter.
