Digital Sustainability: The Key to GDP Protection

We’re accustomed to considering sustainability in areas like travel, fashion, or food. Yet, there’s a less visible but rapidly growing player in the climate conversation: the digital world.

The internet might feel intangible, but its environmental footprint is substantial. In fact, it’s been stated that the web is responsible for between 2.1% and 3.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s comparable to the aviation industry.

For businesses, this is significant. But it also has broader implications. As climate change intensifies, we’re witnessing economic consequences that extend beyond environmental impact.

How does climate change affect the wider economy?

A recent report from Allianz Research indicates that recent heatwaves across Europe could reduce economic growth in the region by up to 0.5 percentage points in 2025.

Countries such as Spain, experiencing higher summer temperatures, may see Gross Domestic Product (GDP) drops as high as 1.4 percentage points, while Germany may face a 0.1 percentage point decline.

Globally, the heatwaves are estimated to lower GDP by 0.6 percentage points this year, with notable effects in China, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the U.S., and a third of a point in France.

With global temperatures continuing to rise, the impact of heatwaves on the economy is only going to get worse. If we aim to cool the planet, or at least slow the warming, and safeguard the economic systems that underpin us, every lever matters, including the digital ones.

From data centres to devices: The true cost of the web

The digital ecosystem demands a significant amount of electricity. From powering always-on servers and content-heavy websites to fuelling our constant scrolling on 5G-enabled phones, the energy consumption is immense.

Consider this: it’s widely reported that the average webpage produces 1.76g of CO₂ per page view. While that might seem negligible, scale changes the perspective. A site with 100,000 monthly views emits 2,112kg of CO₂ per year, equivalent to flying from London to New York and back twice.

We’ve often accepted this as an unavoidable cost of digital business. But it doesn’t have to be.

Why businesses should care (beyond the obvious)

All digital sustainability improvements to a website will make it load faster, and with Google and other search engines including speed within their ranking factors, any improvements you make in the name of the environment provide a benefit to your business, and vice versa.

Ergo, carbon footprint optimisation improves the ROI of your website. On an ecommerce site, a 0.1 second improvement in page load results in the following:

• 9.2% increase in average order value
• 8.4% increase in user transactions
• 5.7% decrease in bounce rates
• 5.2% increase in page views/session
• 5.5% increase in lead generation

This presents a significant opportunity. Lighter websites load faster, rank higher in search engines, and convert more users. And beyond performance metrics, it’s about futureproofing: as governments and consumers become more carbon-conscious, brands that neglect digital emissions may find themselves at a disadvantage.

A small change with systemic impact

Here’s the broader perspective. While a single business optimising its image sizes or cleaning up bloated code might not seem capable of altering global climate patterns, collective action at scale can make a huge difference.

If more organisations adopted digital sustainability practices, such as compressing images, reducing unnecessary scripts, using green hosting, and auditing their web performance, it could lessen the load on data centres worldwide. This translates to lower energy demands, which, in turn, could alleviate pressure on power grids during summer peaks and reduce the risk of climate-driven GDP shocks like those reported by Allianz.

The internet is one of the few sectors where marginal gains can scale exponentially. The web is ubiquitous, and so is the opportunity.

The hidden climate lever

What makes digital sustainability particularly compelling is its accessibility. Unlike overhauling a manufacturing supply chain or electrifying a vehicle fleet, optimising a website or switching to an eco-friendly host doesn’t require years of investment or complex infrastructure changes.

In fact, many improvements, like reducing image sizes or removing unused plugins, are both cost-saving and quick wins.

While these changes might not garner headlines like green hydrogen or carbon capture, they contribute to the same mission: mitigating global warming. And by turn: increasing business revenue and the GDP of entire countries.

Why businesses need to act now

Digital sustainability can’t be considered a niche concern any longer; it’s a necessity. As the world contends with rising temperatures and the economy begins to feel the effects of climate volatility, we need every tool at our disposal.

Businesses that act now aren’t just enhancing their own bottom line; they’re contributing to a larger narrative where the digital world supports the real one, rather than working against it.

Want help making your digital estate more sustainable? Let’s talk.