The case summed up Snøhetta has built a new website to reduce its climate footprint. The construction industry contributes to 14.7 million tonnes of CO2 emissions globally, and accounts for 16% of emissions in Norway. Snøhetta has chosen to make the image on its website more blurry in order to reduce storage space and power consumption. The website now loads faster, which gives a better user experience, Snøhetta believes. The experts hope others will follow Snøhetta’s example. The summary is made by an AI service from OpenAi. The content is quality assured by news’s journalists before publication. The construction industry is not climate-friendly. According to the Green Building Alliance, the Norwegian building and construction sector contributes to 14.7 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in the world. In Norway, they report that the construction industry accounts for 16 percent of emissions. But now one of Norway’s best-known architectural firms is taking action to get its footprints online. Several developers news has spoken to think it is a good idea. Makes the picture blurry Everything that is online is stored on a server somewhere. This means that the internet has a high climate emission. Globally, the IT industry has roughly the same emissions as air traffic. Websites can also have a high climate footprint. Some of the things that require a lot of storage space and electricity are pictures, videos and animations in the websites. The architectural and design firm Snøhetta has long talked about green solutions in its architecture. Now they want to do the same with the internet. But they are also completely dependent on presenting their architecture in pictures. So what have they actually done? This is how the illustration of Coarvematta drawn by Snøhetta looks like with high and low resolution Snøhetta You can choose whether you want to see a clear or a blurry image. In addition, they have chosen a green hosting solution and cleaned up the content on their site. – You get a slightly more blurry image, but it can still have a very exciting aesthetic quality, says Hedda Lilleng, head of Snøhetta Design. For an architect and design company, it was a difficult choice, says Lilleng. This is what the illustration of Under the sign of Snøhetta looks like with high and low resolution.Snøhetta Should they really make their picture worse? – But then we decided on it since it is worth testing. One has to make green choices at the cost of something. – Not a greenwashing campaign Lilleng says that for Snøhetta this was a perfect opportunity to conduct research on digital resilience. – In the grand scheme of things, it is little. But since there are so many of us who use the internet all the time, it potentially becomes a lot. This is what the high-resolution and the low-resolution image on Snøhetta’s website look like. You must specifically decide whether you are going to see it in high resolution.Snøhetta – Is it to compensate for an otherwise high climate emission? – No, it is not. Digital design’s footprint is smaller than our total footprint. But it is not meant as a greenwashing campaign, says the head of Snøhetta Design. – We do not believe that we will save the world with this, but we believe in addressing emissions at all levels and in raising some issues that we can learn something from, by talking about them. Do you think it is wise for Snøhetta to reduce the image quality to make the website more climate-friendly? No, I think the picture turned out ugly with low quality. It’s not worth it. Yes, I don’t think it matters that I have to click an extra time to see the image in full quality. Perhaps, something must be done if we are to reach the climate targets. Show result Snøhetta has thus reduced the file size of all its images. In addition, they use a filter that the user can switch on and off. It reduces both size and quality even more, at the same time as it creates attention to the problem. – This move also makes the user experience better, says Lilleng. Now it takes less time to load Snøhetta’s website. The internet is becoming less and less climate-friendly Svale Fossåskaret, consultant and developer at Feed Oslo, says that the size of the internet has grown a lot in recent years. In sum, this means that more current is constantly being used on the internet. – In Ireland, they expect that in a few years the data centers will account for 30 per cent of the total power consumption in the country. Svale Fossåskaret, advisor and developer at Feed Oslo, believes that the measures Snøhetta has taken should be an inspiration to others. Photo: Thomas Ekstrom And several reports point to the growth in electricity consumption by 2030 coming from data centres. It is therefore possible for network operators to do something about their climate footprint. But it costs money and takes time. Fossåskaret therefore believes that it makes sense that large companies such as Equinor have a smaller footprint on their website than youth organizations such as Nature and Youth. – Hope others will come after Fossåskaret knows and to Snøhetta’s resilience side. – I think it is a great and exploratory initiative with good reflections, he says. Also developer at Oslo Analytic, Magnus Svendsen, thinks Snøhetta’s venture is interesting. – The fact that they have gone so far as to be able to choose the resolution of the image is very good, he says. – I really hope they get a focus here. The website is very nice and performs very well. I hope they become a rental star for many.
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Snøhetta is building a climate-friendly website by blurring its images – news Nordland
