Carbon Footprint of an eService Development

The Life Cycle Analyses of a website, an e-commerce and a mobile app of Kuopio animal park, developed by Hurry Ltd media agency, was carried out in 2021. The analyses followed the ISO 14067 guidance, and included participatory process of inventory data collection with SimaPro Collect. An online survey on website developed and operation was conducted and gathered data was utilised in carbon footprint analyses. The focus was especially on the development of e-services, but also their early use in first three-month summer season and a peak season week in July were investigated. Three month-carbon (July-September 2021) footprint of a website and a mobile app development was approximately 1.9 tons of CO2eqv., whereas the website use created only 15 kg CO2eqv. emission. This is partly because the data centre utilised renewable hydropower, website and its services are rather small size (7,9 MB), and number of users was moderate (22 000). The eService designer and developers used average grid
electricity that established most of the emissions. Basing on the case study findings, we will discuss on how it remains essential to have focus on organizational carbon footprint and emission reductions in ICT and media enterprises, and how internal compensations from data centers could be utilised in these sectors.

The study was conducted in ERDF co-financed Communicative Energy project.