Re: Ethical Web Principles

Hi guys

This is very interesting. I agree with Alex that there is value in
referring to energy as well as emissions. I've seen that the conversation
around this in France, where they have a lot of nuclear energy, focusses
very much on energy consumption as well as CO2 because "low carbon" in
itself is only a part of the bigger picture and impact. All models for
widespread decarbonisation have a big focus on the need for energy
efficiency and reduction in energy consumption, not just a switch to low
carbon energy generation, so I think energy consumption is important to
have in the picture.

I'm not convinced by the anti-competitive argument, and I think in the
context that we are working on establishing best practices and not rules,
it would be hard to argue that energy efficiency is not a best practice.


Tom Greenwood
Managing Director
tom@wholegraindigital.com

Tel   0207 112 8240
Website   www.wholegraindigital.com
LinkedIn   www.linkedin.com/in/tomgreenwood/
Read my book, Sustainable Web Design
<https://abookapart.com/products/sustainable-web-design/>, from A Book
Apart and check out our B Corp profile
<https://bcorporation.net/directory/wholegrain-digital>.


On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 11:57 AM Alexander Dawson <alex@hitechy.com> wrote:

> Hi Chris,
>
> Thanks for the links. While I agree emissions should be the central point
> of focus in relation to sustainability (with regards to climate impact on
> the Web) as it covers a wider range of variables, I do think there is
> perhaps something to mentioning energy use (perhaps as a by-product of
> emissions) in context for the very reason that most nations still produce a
> significant proportion of their electricity through non-sustainable sources
> (coal / gas) and thereby it has a trickle down impact in terms of
> sustainability. Which will ultimately have a energy footprint dependant on
> how resource intensive sites and apps (and their assets) are.
>
> Alex
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Chris Adams <chris@thegreenwebfoundation.org>
> *Sent:* 13 May 2022 11:41
> *To:* Alexander Dawson <alex@hitechy.com>
> *Cc:* public-sustyweb@w3.org <public-sustyweb@w3.org>
> *Subject:* Re: Ethical Web Principles
>
> Hi Alex. thanks for sharing this.
>
> If you’re going to look refer to this, it’s worth being aware that there’s
> a whole discussion going on about the Sustainability principle, calling it
> anticompetitive for daring to refer to energy use, as well as a W3C session
> in 2019 from Tantek Celik.
>
> https://github.com/w3ctag/ethical-web-principles/issues/
>
> A while back I raised this issue to tweak the language to refer to carbon
> specifically - at the time, I figured it was a way to talk about the thing
> we really care about - the harmful effects of the emissions rather than the
> energy use, as when we only look at efficiency/consumption as a lever, we
> miss all kinds of opportunities for improvement
>
> https://github.com/w3ctag/ethical-web-principles/issues/11
>
> We cover this in more detail with this three levers model here:
>
> https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/news/three-levers-for-change-as-a-technologist-consumption-intensity-and-direction
>
> There are obviously more issues to account for than just carbon, and we
> cover some of them in this report we released before:
>
> https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/publications/report-fog-of-enactment/
>
> There are all kinds equity related issues as well TBH, as well as non
> carbon related impacts to account for, and we’ve died into some of this
> here as well
>
>
> https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/news/what-people-think-building-a-sustainable-internet-involves-vs-what-it-might-actually-be/
>
> https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/news/who-pays-for-cleaner-energy-on-the-web/
>
>
>
>
> Chris Adams
>
> Co-director
>
> w: thegreenwebfoundation.org
> e: chris@thegreenwebfoundation.org
> t: @mrchrisadams
>
> The Green Web Foundation
> Van 't Hoffstraat 1
> 6706 KD Wageningen, The Netherlands
>
>
> On 13. May 2022, at 01:36, Alexander Dawson <alex@hitechy.com> wrote:
>
> Hey everyone,
>
> I saw this interesting document on W3C TAG and thought it might be useful
> toward integration in any future recommendations we hope to make in the
> future. Especially 2.2 and 2.9 as it ties directly into our goals.
>
> https://www.w3.org/TR/2022/DNOTE-ethical-web-principles-20220512/
>
> As it's a draft note I figured I'd post it now while they are still
> developing it.
>
> Alexander
>
>
>