Towards a Fossil-Free Internet: The Fog of Enactment
Priority areas for research in digital sustainability

A decade ago, the Green Web Foundation set out to increase the internet’s energy efficiency and speed up its transition away from fossil fuels. As a Dutch non-profit, we steward the largest open dataset that tracks websites running on renewables—with an open tool suite used over 2 billion times.
We are now focusing on a fossil-free internet by 2030. We commissioned this report from one of the leading independent researchers in digital sustainability, Gauthier Roussilhe, as the opening chapter in a forthcoming series, Towards a Fossil Free Internet, which will explore paths to decarbonize the internet while working towards digital ecosystems that are open, diverse and in service to people’s needs.
