Computing technology is a substantial source of greenhouse gas emissions – the IT industry emits more CO2 than aviation, shipping and rail combined. The mission at Root & Branch Digital is to build sustainable web and digital technologies and help other companies build their own.

Everything that defines how the business is different is now packaged into its Cardamon Web Model. It is fully compliant with the ISO/IEC 21031:2024 Information technology – Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specification, which ‘describes a methodology for calculating the rate of carbon emissions for a software system’, through its use, production and end of life.

In a nutshell, Cardamon calculates the energy consumption of back-end website processes – those running in the background and necessary for it to function – and estimates the energy consumption from running applications at the front end, on devices including laptops and tablets.

Adam Newman, co-founder at Root & Branch Digital, explains: “We help companies understand the emissions associated with customers using their application, most commonly a website or web communications technology. That includes identifying where they are in the world and how they use the application. Then we run our own tests on the application and use all that data to calculate the emissions.”

The Innovate UK funding enabled Root & Branch Digital to build Cardamon, now a complete, proprietary technology. Without the grant, Adam says building it would have been a huge risk for him and partner Oliver Winks, each of whom ran one-person businesses.

The grant gave us the freedom to explore an area where no one else is really looking and then emerge as experts in the area. Without it, I think we would still be struggling to make it work.

– Adam Newman, Co-founder, Root & Branch Digital

Back-end control

Companies have no control over where and how users access their applications. But in some cases those companies can control the back end. Cloud deployments allow them to make choices over where they host, based on factors including local energy costs and the availability of green or renewable energy.

Cardamon energy data gathered from running applications also informs developers, helping them make emissions-saving decisions when they build applications. The information can help existing websites meet or prove compliance with emissions targets too.

“Positioning sustainability data alongside performance, cost and security considerations unlocks several opportunities for reducing website emissions,” Adam says. “The hosting could be moved, for example, or perhaps the hosting has been over provisioned. Addressing either factor could reduce waste in software systems, saving costs, reducing emissions and making sustainability an important consideration in company decision making.”

As Cardamon reveals an application’s energy efficiency, it also highlights areas where constant attention can keep energy consumption low. Adam provides the example of a website Root & Branch Digital built to be as green and slick as possible. Its subsequent unexpectedly high energy consumption was a key driver in Cardamon’s creation.

“When we build a website, we measure its energy consumption and continue to measure it through our ongoing relationship with the client. We handed this one over without saying anything about the content management process. Weeks later, it was no longer efficient because the people managing it hadn’t realised how their decisions could affect the site’s green credentials,” Adam recalls.

Simple choices like avoiding using large or high-resolution photographs where they are not required will reduce a website’s energy consumption and, therefore, emissions for the host and user. Those large images also drive increased demand for bandwidth, requiring more from the network, again driving energy use. Cardamon detects and flags those variations.

Meanwhile, the UK hosts an increasing number of data centres, each with its own energy requirements and associated emissions. Cooling is a significant factor and the widescale use of more efficient websites and web applications can reduce cooling needs, further reducing emissions and environmental impact.

The majority of Cardamon research and development work is complete, and the focus now is on market validation before its developers turn to commercialisation. Adam and Oliver also drew on the expertise they gained completing the work to write Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) For Web Measuring energy and emissions of web applications, a seminal paper on the subject.

Root & Branch Digital is already helping customers understand their energy use and emissions, and the future is likely to see companies gaining ISO certification against ISO/IEC 21031. Adam says that when, as the industry expects, declaring end user emissions becomes compulsory, then Cardamon will be well placed in the new commercial landscape that results.