What are the challenges of towns against digital pollution?
Nowadays, in France, 67% of carbon emissions are realized in urban areas. According to recent report, towns would have the capacity to reduce their carbon footprint of 90% by 2050. This touches many uses, including digital.
Which responsible digital policies? What are the obligations?
The 2nd of November 2021, the proposition of law aiming to reduce the carbon footprint of digital has been adopted by the parliament. The municipalities of more than 50,000 inhabitants should by the 1st of January 2025 define a responsible digital strategy and digital sobriety. This strategy should indicate the objectives of reduction of digital environmental footprint and the measures put in place to reach them. An annual balance also should be established.
In the world, urban areas consume more than 65% of the produced energy and represent more than 70% of carbon emissions. It is so important that towns act on the ecosystem, but also on the innovation to succeed their transition into carbon neutrality by 2050.
The European Commission also starts a challenge to towns of Europe with the challenge “100 neutral towns in carbon by 2030”. 9 French towns and metropoles, candidates to the mission of the European Union, have been selected by the Commission. Among them, we have Paris, Angers, Nantes, Dijon, Dunkerque, Grenoble, Lyon, Marseille et Bordeaux. The selected towns should elaborate a global plan for carbon neutrality in all activity sectors.
In order to engage some innovation trajectories into the climatic neutrality by 2030, the objective of neutral town, these metropoles will have a funding of up to €360 million. French towns could benefit from more, advices and a customized assistance through a dedicated specific platform.
What is the state of play of websites of French towns?
Thanks to our tool Greenoco, we could realize a ranking of carbon emissions of towns’ websites. By analyzing the charged data, and their optimization degree, we can calculate the consumed electricity for every page load by the data center, and so its carbon footprint.
With carbon emissions going from 0.06 grams for the town of Lyon to 5.20 grams for Nice, the gaps are important. With a ratio of 1 to 80! Paris is in the 20th position, with emissions of 2.59 grams.
And your municipality, where is it?
| Ranking | Website | Emissions in g per page viewed |
| 1 | LYON | 0,06 |
| 2 | PAU | 0,16 |
| 3 | RODEZ | 0,21 |
| 4 | CHERBOURG | 0,30 |
| 5 | AVIGNON | 0,36 |
| 6 | BORDEAUX | 0,36 |
| 7 | BREST | 0,40 |
| 8 | RENNES | 0,47 |
| 9 | STRASBOURG | 0,65 |
| 10 | ANNECY | 0,73 |
| 11 | LE MANS | 0,74 |
| 12 | ANGERS | 0,75 |
| 13 | ANGLET | 0,87 |
| 14 | LE HAVRE | 0,92 |
| 15 | TOURS | 1,11 |
| 16 | BIARRITZ | 1,12 |
| 17 | LORIENT | 1,21 |
| 18 | BAYONNE | 1,40 |
| 19 | LA ROCHELLE | 1,52 |
| 20 | PARIS | 2,59 |
| 21 | MARSEILLE | 2,77 |
| 22 | CAEN | 2,78 |
| 23 | NICE | 5,20 |
Measures realized in August 2022
Towns, are they going to start a new challenge in the reduction of carbon emissions related to the use of digital?
What solutions are being considered?
In France, 85% of innovations wish the development of more responsible digital uses, and more virtuous. For the rest 15%, maybe, it’s just a matter of time and of pedagogy.
In Greenoco, we have developed an algorithm that allows to measure and to reduce the carbon emissions of websites. We also identify the optimization to realize in priority to reduce them, without requiring a website redesign.
By realizing this work, you optimize the resources of your website with complementary advantages:
- improving of loading time
- improving of natural referencing
- reduction of electric consumption
- limiting host needs and of used band width
You want to put in place the tool of Greenoco among your community or metropole, to answer the objectives launched by the government, but also to be in agreement with the values of the municipality inhabitants. Contact-us!
