Some background
You don’t know what you don’t know, and then you have a lightbulb moment. Mine came at the ETHO Technical Community Conference at the Royal College of Art in February 2023. Aymeric Mansoux, one of the keynote speakers, spoke about the social, political, economic and environmental ramifications of computer technology in art and design education. Corporations essentially bait our creativity into adopting new tools and technologies, and we seldom think critically about this. In contrast, he introduced the concept of permacomputing as concept and a practice. As it states on the Permaculture website:
In a time where computing epitomizes industrial waste, permacomputing encourages the maximizing of hardware lifespans, minimizing energy use and focussing on the use of already available computational resources. We do this [as] we want to find out how we can practice good relations with the Earth by learning from ecological systems to leverage and re-center existing technologies and practices. We are also interested in investigating what a permacomputing way of life could be, and what sort of transformative computational culture and aesthetics it could bring forward.
(Permacomputing.org 2023)
As a learning technologist, this made me think about online learning and its impact on the environment. Could I apply these principles to my approach to online learning? Where do I begin?
The carbon footprint of the internet
First some personal reflections. Reflecting on what it is to exist in the UK in 2023, two (of many) things come to mind: how blended our lives are between online and offline, and the climate crisis. I’m not sure how much these two things – online living & climate change – get discussed in the same sentence as relational matters. Part of this research project’s aim is to tease that out. At CSM Technical we are actioning sustainable practices in our labs and workshops. But it’s only with this research project that I’m actually thinking about what that means for me, my practice and the online learning provision I’m supporting for staff and students.
Now some not very nice facts.
If the Internet were a country it would be one of the top five polluters.
(Siegman 2023)
It’s estimated that the internet’s carbon footprint is at least equal to, if not greater than, the global aviation industry. And these emissions are expected to double by 2025.
(Griffiths 2022)
This huge footprint is partly made up of the accumulated worldwide usage. In and of themselves, a single email or internet search are not carbon heavy. But when over half the world is now actively online, these online activities add up and as they do so too does the need for data centres and servers to power our connectivity. These centres and servers are carbon intensive indeed, and if this is coupled with the fact that they are are often not powered by renewable energy, we start to understand how huge and complex this issue is.
Why does this matters in the UAL context
UAL is social purpose institution and climate justice is a large part of this, from the UAL climate emergency network and embedding climate across the curriculum. This shows the commitment of staff and students to thinking about climate in everything that we do. I will explore UAL’s climate publications later in this post.
However what doesn’t quite add up is how we can tally our climate action with our desire to expand online learning as per the UAL’s Guiding Policy 2 (2022). Are we considering how to do this in the most sustainable way?
This is furthermore important to UAL because research suggests that the climate crisis is having an adverse effect on student wellbeing. The Climate Change and Student Mental Health Report (Smith 2023) survey of 153 survey respondents and twelve focus-group participants uncovered some concerning findings: 90% of students said climate change impacted their mental health and wellbeing in the preceding four weeks. This demonstrates the importance of addressing the climate crisis in all aspect of what we do as an institution.
UAL Climate Emergency Network
Does UAL have a sense of our online carbon footprint? I searched through the documentation published by our Climate Emergency Network, a community formed of staff and students, and understandably as this is a difficult thing to calculate, I didn’t find a direct answer. However, I did find some interesting things, including how online platforms are seen as a tool in our approach to sustainable practice. I.e. One of the strategy’s is to:
Explore models for online courses which share our knowledge on climate justice in the context of specific disciplines. With reference to the success of Centre for Sustainable Fashion’s Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) – Fashion and Sustainability: Understanding Luxury Fashion in a Changing World – hosted on Future Learn.
(UAL 2022)
However, there isn’t mention of how to design and build within these platforms using a sustainable mindset. Similarly I found the UAL electricity consumption report. An uncomfortable truth for CSM is that our King’s Cross site consumes approximately the same amount of electricity as all the other sites put together. (University of the Arts London 2023). But what part of that relates to our online learning activities? This wouldn’t capture the off site usage of Moodle and other UAL sites either.
UAL’s 2022-2032 strategy sets out the aim to bring a high-quality creative education to more students than ever before and online learning is instrumental in that. But that needs to be sustainably done for the benefit of the planet, our staff and our students.
Moodle’s carbon footprint
There are a number of free carbon calculators for websites out there, so I decided to try Moodle.arts.ac.uk for a cursory reading. There is a caveat however that the reading may not be as extensive as it appears, as Moodle’s content is behind a login wall, so I’m unclear how much of Moodle’s content the calculators are able to assess beyond the initial login page. I’ve also tried the general arts.ac.uk site (which should be more open) to get a sense of how we’re doing as an institution.
Not very well as it happens.
| Moodle.arts.ac.uk | arts.ac.uk | |
| Ecograder score | This page scores worse than 81% of all URLs crawled by Ecograder | This page scores worse than 94% of all URLs crawled by Ecograder |
| Website Carbon Calculator score | This web page is dirtier than 61% of web pages tested | This web page is dirtier than 86% of web pages tested |
What can we do?
The advice for remedying these scores boils down to:
- Moving to a green host > this is a UAL senior management decision, however I would be interested to query this at an All Staff Briefing (see postscript below for more on this)
- Plant trees to offset our carbon emissions > this is out of my hands and possibly not a long term solution to bad practice?
- Make your website more efficient > thinking specifically about our elearning platforms, how and where did we begin?
To answer that final question I think the place to start is from the beginning: how much do digital learning staff know about this topic and how we can create best practice in this area? My research methods post shares detail of how I intend to answer those questions.
Postscripts
- Since writing this blog, due to the poor rating our websites received from both Ecograder (2023) and Website Carbon Calculater (2023) in the October UAL all-staff briefing I asked “Are our websites and systems hosted by a green hosting provider? If not, is there a plan towards that?“.The university has responded that:
Our data centre partner operates the gold standard in sustainable data centres using energy from 100% renewable sources. We also host a range of services and applications in various cloud providers and plan to look into collating information on a single document with each provider’s sustainability statement.
(Joyce 2023)
- I have also since discovered UAL’s content strategy, in which sustainability is mentioned:
It is difficult to accurately calculate our digital carbon footprint, however, ICT is estimated to generate 4% of all global greenhouse emissions. The average webpage is estimated to produce 1.5g to1.76g carbon per page view. The Website Carbon Checker estimates that our homepage alone produces 4.3g of carbon per page view. If viewed 10,000 times, this is the same amount of carbon that 24 trees absorb in a year. We must prevent the website becoming bloated with unnecessary pages and content if we are to support Guiding policy 3 of the UAL corporate strategy.
(Heselden 2022)
References
Dawson, A. and Frick, T. (eds.) (2023) Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) 1.0, Web sustainability guidelines (WSG) 1.0. Available at: https://w3c.github.io/sustyweb/ (Accessed: 09 October 2023).
Daeninck, C., Kioupi, V. and Vercammen, A. (2023) ‘Climate anxiety, coping strategies and planning for the future in environmental degree students in the UK’, Frontiers in Psychology, 14. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1126031.
Ecograder.com (2023) Impact report for https://www.arts.ac.uk/. [Webpage] Available at: https://ecograder.com/report/rnbx0SlRapy8Ax39sXAtbVRR (Accessed: 06 October 2023).
Ecograder.com (2023) Impact report for https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/login/index.php. [Webpage] Available at: https://ecograder.com/report/orCS0jpIHGiJjy8Ddp51yvnw (Accessed: 06 October 2023).
Greenwood, T. (2023) 20 ways to make your website more energy efficient, Wholegrain Digital. Available at: https://www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/website-energy-efficiency/ (Accessed: 09 October 2023).
Griffiths, S. (2022) Why your internet habits are not as clean as you think, BBC Future. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think#:~:text=The%20carbon%20footprint%20of%20our,a%20researcher%20at%20Lancaster%20University. (Accessed: 06 October 2023).
Heselden, M. (2022) Digital content design strategy for arts.ac.uk 2022-2025. Available at: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/documents/sppreview/0eb0ce28-2598-47c4-b672-787b3f906f97 (Accessed: 19 October 2023).
Joyce, E. (2023) All staff briefings Q&A session | Monday 16 October Available at: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/documents/sppreview/e2818b82-6dc5-448e-8c73-1669759abea9 (Accessed 25 January 2024).
Odrozek, K. (2018) The internet uses more electricity than…, Internet Health Report. Available at: https://internethealthreport.org/2018/the-internet-uses-more-electricity-than/ (Accessed: 06 October 2023).
Permacomputing.org (2023) Permacomputing. Available at: https://permacomputing.net/ (Accessed 06 October 2023).
Siegman, T. (2023) Introducing web sustainability guidelines, W3C. Available at: https://www.w3.org/blog/2023/introducing-web-sustainability-guidelines/ (Accessed: 09 October 2023).
Smith, A. (2023) Climate Change and Student Mental Health Report. Available at: https://www.studentminds.org.uk/uploads/3/7/8/4/3784584/climate_change_and_student_mental_health.pdf (Accessed 25 January 2024)
University of the Arts London (2023) All staff briefing Q&A: Monday 16 October Questions (2023) [Website] Available at: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/sites/explore/SitePage/230145/all-staff-briefing-q-a (Accessed 25 October 2023)
University of the Arts London (2023) Electricity Consumption. [Report] Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0025/374128/Climate-Action-Plan_Nov2022.pdf (Accessed 09 October 2023)
University of the Arts London (2022) Climate Action Plan. [Report] Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0025/374128/Climate-Action-Plan_Nov2022.pdf (Accessed 25 October 2023)
University of the Arts London (2022) Guiding policy 2. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/strategy-and-governance/strategy/guiding-policy-2 (Accessed: 20 November 2023).
Website Carbon Calculator. (2023) Carbon results for arts.ac.uk. Available at: https://www.websitecarbon.com/website/arts-ac-uk/ (Accessed: 06 October 2023).
Website Carbon Calculator. (2023) Carbon results for moodle.arts.ac.uk/login/index.php. Available at: https://www.websitecarbon.com/website/moodle-arts-ac-uk-login-index-php/ (Accessed: 06 October 2023).