Emission Per User (EPU)

In the realm of digital sustainability, understanding the carbon footprint associated with each user's interaction with your website or app is crucial. This is where the "Emission Per User" (EPU) metric comes into play. In Statsy, we use this metric to quantify the average amount of carbon emissions generated per user during a specific period.

Understanding Emission Per User

The "Emission Per User" metric represents the average amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, in grams, associated with the data transferred from your server to a user's device. This includes all the data necessary to load and interact with your website or app, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and other media files. It also includes data from both first-party and third-party requests.

The calculation of the "Emission Per User" metric is based on the "Total Emission" metric divided by the total number of users during a specific period. This gives an average figure that represents the carbon emissions associated with a single user's interaction with your website or app.

The "Emission Per User" metric is affected by various factors, including browser cache and data compression. When a resource is loaded from the browser cache, it doesn't need to be transferred from the server, thus reducing the emission per user. Similarly, data compression techniques can significantly reduce the size of text-based resources, leading to a smaller emission per user.

Emission Per User and Digital Sustainability

The "Emission Per User" metric is a key indicator of the environmental impact of your website or app on a per-user basis. The lower the emission per user, the lower the carbon footprint of your digital product per user. Therefore, reducing the "Emission Per User" metric is a direct way to contribute to digital sustainability and reduce the environmental impact of your digital product.

Reducing Emission Per User

There are several strategies you can employ to reduce the "Emission Per User" metric:

• Optimize Transfer Size: As the "Emission Per User" metric is directly related to the amount of data transferred per user, reducing the size of resources on your website can significantly decrease the emission per user. This can be achieved by compressing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript files, leveraging browser caching, implementing lazy loading, and reducing third-party requests.

• Improve User Experience: A well-designed user experience can reduce unnecessary interactions and thus the amount of data transferred. This can be achieved by simplifying navigation, optimizing page load speed, and ensuring that content is relevant and engaging.

• Use Green Hosting: The carbon intensity of electricity used by your server can significantly affect the emission per user. Using a green hosting provider, which uses renewable energy sources, can help reduce the carbon intensity and thus the emission per user.

Conclusion

The "Emission Per User" metric is a vital part of understanding and optimizing the sustainability of your website or app. By monitoring and reducing this metric, you can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of your digital product per user and contribute to a more sustainable digital world.