Carbon Control – Scott Jehl, Catchpoint

This is Techstrong tv. Hello everyone and welcome back to techstrong tv. I'm Bonnie Schneider.

Today we're talking about a new tool that not only measures, but also offers solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of something we all use every day websites. With us today is Scott Gel, senior experience engineer at Catchpoint to talk to us about carbon control, a new feature in Catchpoint's webpage test solution that's aiding organizations in complying with European climate law, and also leading us towards a more sustainable digital future. Welcome, Scott.

Hey, thanks so much for having me, Bonnie. Oh, it's great to have you here. Uh, we know that you're known as an advocate for fast, uh, resilient web experiences, but I'd like to learn more about your background and how you got involved with Catchpoint and their carbon control feature.

Sure. Uh, yeah, so I am a web designer and developer. I've been doing this for decades, uh, working with companies large and small as well as, uh, products, uh, that I've worked on.

Um, on the team itself, uh, I have a particular interest in, um, web performance and accessibility. Um, so I've sort of aimed to improve awareness of those concerns through open source work, uh, writing books and presenting at conferences around the world. Um, how that ties into, uh, my work at Catchpoint.

Uh, I joined a couple of years ago at this point or around that. Um, and, uh, that was because they, they work on, they, they own a tool that I've been using for probably a decade, um, called webpage test. And, uh, they were building a team around, uh, you know, maintaining and improving how that tool works.

Um, so, you know, it was sort of, uh, a perfect fit for me to be able to influence the, the direction of the future of that product. And can you explain, uh, how carbon control works and how it measures a website's carbon footprint, and especially regarding the metrics and data and how that's taken into consideration? Yeah.

Uh, so I guess, um, it might help to first, uh, give some context around the environment that carbon control runs within, uh, which is webpage test, and that's one of, uh, the tools in Catchpoint's platform of various, uh, internet performance monitoring tools. Um, so webpage tests specifically focuses mostly on the front end experience, or that is to say how a site performs from the end user's perspective when they open it on their browser or their, their device. Um, and carbon control is one aspect of that.

So, uh, webpage test monitors many aspects from a performance or accessibility, uh, perspective, um, such as, you know, how quickly a site appears to visually load, uh, as you, uh, you know, from the, from the time that you type in A U R L and click go to actually seeing visual progress. Um, and then, uh, helps you understand why there are delays in particular moments of that journey, so to speak, when you're trying to load a webpage. Uh, cuz often increasingly it can take a long time, um, even though, you know, performance, uh, should be improving in the last, you know, several decades as, as the technology of the internet improves, um, we're sort of always, uh, fighting against this current of, uh, increasing the file size of the sites that we deliver, um, to a point that it, it sometimes negates the, the, um, uh, improvements that we would otherwise see.

Um, so webpage test helps you understand and, uh, improve on those aspects. And one of those is, uh, recently, uh, carbon footprint measuring. Um, so it gives you an estimated carbon footprint for a website, uh, which generally takes a couple of factors into account, uh, the transfer size of the files that are required to, to run the website.

So how, how much, uh, uh, you know, megabytes or kilobytes, uh, you download when you're accessing the website, and then whether or not those files are, uh, hosted, uh, in a, in a green, um, manner or not. Um, so, uh, generally the idea is that all websites are hosted on servers and viewed on power hungry devices, uh, generating and storing and transferring and downloading all those files, uh, all have potential carbon footprint, um, qualities to them. So, uh, we try to give an estimate of that.

Um, knowing that files are green hosted really helps, uh, you know, um, knowing that it's running on renewable energy, of course, uh, means that that aspect of the website's delivery has no footprint, which is great, uh, but it doesn't mean the whole, the whole cycle of, uh, downloading it and running it on a device, uh, has no footprint as well. So the tools that we, uh, that we use, uh, attempt to estimate the cost even if green hosting is involved. Okay.

Well that's, uh, it sounds like it's a, a valuable tool and it's of course it's something that's, uh, needed with, uh, new regulations and laws that are coming into play. Can you talk a little bit about the European climate, uh, rules that are, are affecting keeping track of emissions and how carbon control can help organizations comply with them? Yeah, so I think, you know, just in general, uh, climate change being such a central concern to our world these days, uh, digital emissions are increasingly important both to people and to, to companies that are potentially creating them.

Um, and I think, you know, as you mentioned, uh, increasingly companies are being asked to track their digital emissions with regulations that are coming into play, particularly in Europe, as you mentioned. Um, so there's a big interest, uh, from these companies and we've been hearing from them, uh, in the last couple of years a lot about this, that they'd like better tools to be able to, uh, understand their digital footprint and be able to, uh, give a better estimate of, uh, of it. And I think carbon control is designed to be one aspect of that.

Um, you know, digital services, uh, are one aspect, you know, delivering files over the web, uh, to a carbon footprint. Um, but other aspects are really important too. Uh, like for example, the devices that a company uses, um, and how frequently they cycle them through, and if that, uh, uh, the lifespan of the device was actually worthwhile compared to the energy it it took to create the device.

Right. Um, so there are all sorts of considerations and we're, we're trying to look at at least a start, uh, just one of those, which is something that's pretty readily available, um, for any site that you test through webpage tests. And is carbon control available globally?

It is, yeah. org, uh, can be accessed, you can, uh, check the box on the homepage of, uh, webpage test run, and include this new metric to be able to track the, um, the, the carbon footprint, um, and get a, get a decent idea of, you know, how, how you're doing, uh, in the context of other sites on the web, say like the top thousand sites and how you compare to that. Um, and a little context of, you know, uh, what does this, you know, Graham's number mean to me in relation to, say, driving a car a mile or something like that.

So we try to provide a little, little information around that. Uh, that's definitely a good analogies for people to kind of get a grasp of their digital missions, but I'm wondering about the actionable insights that once someone says, oh wow, we are having more emissions than we'd like, I mean, what, where does carbon control come into that area to help people to make changes? Yeah, I'm so glad you asked because that's, uh, to me the most exciting aspect of it.

Um, you know, knowing is important and just spreading awareness that digital, uh, services have a footprint. Um, but being able to act on it is, um, is the hard part and, and the part that I think is really unique about this, uh, this particular tool. So, uh, just more broadly, webpage test has a feature called Experiments and that allows you to run, uh, performance optimizations on a live website and actually test in a sort of synthetic environment whether or not something actually improves performance or whatever problem you're trying to address, uh, in real time on a real, uh, website, of course would not actually, you know, monitoring, uh, or sorry, without, uh, modifying the actual website.

So it's in a, a simulated environment. Um, but it uses the live website to test it. So, um, in that same way that you could say, see if, uh, loading a script file a different way might make the site appear quicker on a device, uh, you can also try experiments that potentially reduce your carbon footprint.

Um, some of those might be to change, uh, some of your, your host providers from, uh, companies that are not using renewable energy to, uh, a place that simulates, uh, a renewable green hosting environment. So you could see, oh wow, that, that makes a pretty, uh, big impact on its own. And of course, the larger impact, uh, that you'll see from experiments are, uh, anything that reduce your file signs.

So if you can get that download weight, uh, you know, reduced, then you're gonna see a big reduction in your, um, in your footprint. Well, that's, uh, definitely helpful. Our viewers are a lot of people like you that work in IT and, and DevOps and, um, they may be interested in knowing how carbon control can be part of their daily workflow, not just on an occasion to check on emissions, but how, how is something like this integrated all the time?

Yeah, uh, good question. So, uh, at the moment, uh, webpage test offers two ways to run it. Um, you can run an, uh, test instantly, like any number of runs, uh, right away, or you can set up a webpage test to run synthetically, uh, in a monitoring sort of scenario.

Um, so both of those scenarios are, are supported through Catchpoint's products, uh, already today. org, so you can use it in a, um, an int instant test scenario. Um, and soon we plan to build it into the, the, um, monitoring product as well.

So you'll be able to, uh, track your footprint, you know, on a day-to-day basis like you would any other metric. That's, Yeah, no, that's definitely helpful. So tell me about the response so far to carbon control from users and, and anyone else in the tech industry that you're in contact with.

Yeah, I think it's been exciting. I mean, uh, you know, the, the web community, I love working in this community cuz it's, you know, it's sort of, uh, open by default. People share their knowledge.

Uh, you know, that's just sort of the way we work and, uh, we're, you know, always chatting on Twitter and, and whatever is, you know, replacing Twitter these days. Uh, and these conversations are, you know, increasingly about, uh, you know, climate change and, uh, what our impact, uh, on climate change is as people who produce, uh, and deliver websites, uh, and, you know, streaming services and things like that that are, you know, can be quite costly. Um, so I think, you know, generally the reception has been, uh, you know, excited so far and, you know, figuring out, oh wow, like this is a great start.

I wonder, um, you know, I wonder what other aspects we can, we can start to look at next and, um, get, you know, deeper analysis of, uh, of an overall company's footprint. Yeah. And that brings us to our final question.

Uh, looking into the future, where do you see the next steps for sustainability in the tech industry? Hmm. Yeah, that's a great question.

I mean, a lot of, uh, a lot of the world is not green hosted, you know, that's, uh, that's to me an obvious step. Um, and I think, you know, you can look to resources like Jerry McGovern's work on the Worldwide Waste, uh, great book that talks about digital waste from an aspect of, you know, device life cycles. Um, we have to, uh, improve battery life and, you know, find ways to, uh, to use the devices we have longer, um, so that we're not, you know, expanding as much energy, uh, creating all of go in this, uh, this, uh, worldwide web.

So, um, yeah, I think, uh, you know, increasingly it's going to be a combination of those things, like how can, how can we deliver more responsibly, uh, you know, lower file sizes and things like that to different devices, uh, while, you know, looking at broader aspects of, um, digital emissions and getting those into control as well. That's great. Well, Scott Gel, senior experience engineer at Catchpoint, thank you so much for joining us on techstrong tv.

Thanks so much, Bonnie. Just in time. All right, thanks Scott.

We're gonna have a lot more coming up on Techstrong TV right after this.