The Carbon Cost of Bad Code: How Technology Choices Shape the Web's Environmental Footprint
We mapped the technology stack of 1.4 million websites and cross-referenced it with published carbon research. Data centers consume 536 TWh annually — 2% of global electricity. Every MB of JavaScript emits up to 1.76g CO2e per pageview. WordPress powers 477,000 sites but unoptimized installations emit 3x more carbon than static alternatives. Cloudflare's CDN reduces network carbon by up to 96%, yet 240,000 sites still run on Apache. Static site generators collectively serve only 2.6% of the web — the greenest architecture is the least adopted. The web's technology choices are an environmental statement, whether site owners realize it or not.