Catchpoint expanded its WebPageTest Solution with a new capability that lets businesses and organizations see the real-time carbon footprint of their websites so they can take specific actions to reduce Internet-related CO2 emissions.

Access to Carbon Control is free. Carbon Control is available through Catchpoint's WebPageTest, the gold standard for website performance testing.

Under the European climate law, EU countries must cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030. Their goal is to make the EU climate neutral by 2050 and Carbon Control is being released to help organizations achieve this target. Using data from multiple sources, including the Green Web Foundation’s Greencheck, Carbon Control provides users with an estimated carbon footprint, including page weight, in grams of carbon per minute and CO2 per new visit. Experts estimate that Information Communication Technology (ICT), including websites, could represent as much as 2.1% to 3.9% greenhouse emissions.

“Sustainability is becoming a higher priority for organizations globally. Not only is it our ethical responsibility, but there are new regulations that will require companies to monitor and manage their environmental reporting,” said Adrian Cockcroft, tech advisor and sustainability advocate. “Carbon Control is making it easy to take the first step by measuring the carbon footprint of a website or web application while also providing actionable recommendations on actions that could result in improvements.”

Measuring one’s carbon footprint is complex and involves many variables, especially with dynamically provisioned applications across data centers. WebPageTest allows running multiple tests to understand the footprint from different locations and the difference between first load and subsequent loads. It also provides a comparison with the benchmark and specific actions that might help reduce the carbon footprint, from switching to a greener hosting provider to image compression. Pro users can also use Carbon Control to run no-code experiments (based on the recommendations) on live sites, to assess the impact those changes will have before taking action.

“Enterprises of all sizes are seeking ways to reduce their carbon footprints, making it part of their missions as well as formalizing reduction goals that align with the UN’s Global Roadmap and other climate initiatives,” said Mehdi Daoudi, CEO and co-founder of Catchpoint. “The always-on and expanding Internet we all want has today a massive carbon footprint. Monitoring environmental impact, and understanding ways to reduce it, is part of our responsibility to society as a whole and to future generations.”

Catchpoint plans to add WebPageTest and the new Carbon Control capability to the Catchpoint Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) Platform, expanding the Web Experience solution and complementing its Customer, Application, Network and Workforce Experience solutions. The new Carbon Control capability will enable customers to do more advanced tests such as understanding the carbon footprint of a scripted website transaction (browsing, shopping cart and payment, for example) and continuous proactive testing.

To help grow the awareness of the importance of managing website carbon footprints, Catchpoint is offering companies a badge to be added to websites, which can be obtained with their carbon control test results.