An analysis of Singapore’s internet landscape has found that most organisations – including certified B Corps – are running websites that are far less energy efficient and more carbon-intensive than global best practice.
The study, released by digital sustainability consultancy Climate UX, assessed 564 audits across 338 websites used by Singapore-based companies, measuring page weight, carbon emissions per page view, hosting energy mix and maintenance indicators.
More than half of all sites fell into the lowest two performance grades, and the majority of organisations “carry substantial avoidable environmental and user-experience costs,” the report said.
The study suggests simple fixes like lighter pages and renewable-powered hosting could cut more than 500 tonnes of CO2 annually – roughly equivalent to the yearly emissions of 100 households – making digital design one of the fastest, most practical climate wins for businesses.
What makes a website green?
Five traits of a sustainable web presence…
Efficient coding, lightweight design: Clean, minimal code; compressed images; and simple layouts that reduce data transfer and server load.
Low-carbon hosting: Servers powered by renewable energy or hosted by providers that track and offset emissions.
Streamlined user experience: Fewer redirects, fast-loading pages, and optimised navigation that reduce the number of server requests made by users.
Content choices: Avoiding autoplay videos, oversized imagery and unnecessary plug-ins – all significantly increase energy consumption.
Performance monitoring: Regular testing using tools that measure a site’s carbon footprint and identify opportunities to cut energy use.
Source: ClimateUX
Bigger websites, bigger emissions
Website carbon scores were calculated using estimates of the electricity need to load a page and the resulting emissions based on the hosting provider’s energy mix. A score was given out of 100, with higher scores indicating lower emissions, more efficient design and better practices.
Large enterprises, which include financial services, telecommunications, media and government, scored lowest overall in the study, with averages in the 30–40 range.
This is partly a result of local hosting requirements. Many enterprise and government websites must host data in Singapore, where renewable-powered hosting options remain limited and the grid is powered almost entirely by natural gas.
In addition, web pages were far above global best practice in weight, driven by large image files, autoplaying video and heavy JavaScript frameworks.
Also, green hosting adoption was low among larger organisations. Financial services sites had a green-hosting adoption rate of just 7.1 per cent, government sites just 10.3 per cent.
As a result, financial services and government websites produced some of the highest emissions per page view – up to 50 grams of CO2 in some cases.
Across the entire dataset, the median homepage weighed 6.2 megabytes, roughly six times heavier than user experience (UX) guidelines recommend – typically less than 1MB.
The average website emitted 11.35 grams of CO2 per page view. For a site with 100,000 monthly visits, this equates to 13.6 tonnes of CO2 per year – roughly the annual footprint of three Singapore residents.
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The internet is like a gigantic data landfill.
Julie Schiller, founder, Climate UX
Some of the worst pages exceeded 100MB, often because of uncompressed media and excessive third-party tracking scripts.
Only 38.5 per cent of audited sites used renewable-powered hosting. Websites on green hosting emitted 58 per cent fewer emissions per page view, and scored 23 points higher than those on fossil-powered infrastructure.
Among sectors that could be clearly identified, sustainability-related companies and non-profits performed best (average score 64) with 77.8 per cent green hosting.
Media websites performed the worst – with an average of 31.5 – and had none had green hosting, despite being heavy users of high-emissions content formats such as rich-media advertising.
Technology sector websites relatively poorly too, averaging 40.2.
SMEs have the greenest websites
The study identified a group of “accidental leaders”: small businesses that used global software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms as their content management systems. Platforms like Squarespace, Wix and Shopify run on hyperscale cloud providers that purchase large volumes of renewable energy.
These small firms achieved average scores of 55–65, because they “inherited” optimised infrastructure powered largely by renewable sources.
Their strong showing suggests that digital sustainability performance in Singapore is often determined not by organisational commitment but by hosting choices and underlying infrastructure.
Companies certified by B Corp, a stringent sustainability certification, performed above the national average, scoring 56.6 out of 100 on average, compared to 49.5 for the full dataset. They were also more likely to use renewable-powered hosting.
However, the report highlighted a credibility gap: 43 per cent of B Corp sites still used fossil-powered hosting, despite strong organisational climate commitments. Even among sustainability-focused companies, pages were often heavier than necessary, and third-party scripts frequently bloated energy use.
The findings come as Singapore tightens its energy-efficiency expectations for data centres through the Green Data Centre Roadmap, a plan announced in 2024 to promote the sustainable growth for data centres, balancing high-demand Artificial Intelligence (AI) with climate targets.
The report argues that policymakers and enterprises have yet to confront the emissions associated with front-end digital services – particularly websites.
Julie Schiller, a former Google UX lead who founded Climate UX last year, told Eco-Business that AI increases the use of websites both by humans and robots, leading to higher carbon emissions – but most companies are currently looking to optimise their websites for AI, not sustainability.
She said that although AI has the potential to help companies with sustainable website design, the flipside is the enormous environment impact of AI use.
Singapore has more than 100 data centres with a total capacity exceeding 1.4 gigawatts. The city-state is expanding capacity, targeting a 300MW increase with a new 700MW “low-carbon” hub on Jurong Island to support AI demand.
Schiller said that more progressive organisations were being more careful about data storage, since the internet “is like a gigantic data landfill.”
“There is so much data out there, much of it is never used – but this digital junk still requires energy to run the servers to store this data. Newer organisations are being very careful about keeping their storage costs, which is another great way to reduce your carbon footprint,” she said.
