We live in a world where everything digital is perceived as “light,” immaterial, and without tangible consequences for the environment. Online activity - browsing the web, sending an email, cloud based data storage, or joining a video call - all seem like harmless actions, yet in reality they require a significant amount of energy and generate digital emissions.
Recognizing this challenge, Karma Metrix was born. The registered trademark has officially become part of the Green Future Project Group, with a clear mission: to measure and reduce companies’ digital footprint and promote digital sustainability.
Karma Metrix is the result of years of research and development in the field of digital sustainability. The brand has developed a proprietary algorithm and a scientific methodology capable of quantifying the emissions generated by a company’s digital assets: including websites, emails, chats and video calls, all the way to cloud usage and, in the future, the use of artificial intelligence.
It is an innovative approach that enables companies to make the invisible visible, providing the tools to monitor their digital footprint and reduce it. With digital asset management tools playing an increasingly strategic role in decarbonization strategies, Karma Metrix represents a true evolution in the field of digital sustainability.
Over time, Karma Metrix’s work has extended its scope of work beyond webpages. The need for stronger scientific and technological foundations arose - foundations that could drive innovation and transform measurement from simply monitoring individual digital assets (such as emails, chats, or websites) into an evaluation of a company’s entire digital ecosystem.
To meet this need, a strategic collaboration was initiated with the Green Future Project Group, culminating in the acquisition of Karma Metrix. The goal: combine expertise and know-how to develop advanced technology for calculating digital footprints - capable of addressing more complex challenges such as cloud infrastructures and the use of AI - and to build an integrated measurement ecosystem.
This shared vision makes it possible for companies to have a comprehensive understanding of their digital footprint, identify targeted actions to reduce it, and make every process more efficient and sustainable.
Digital footprints are an increasingly important concern, fueled by the massive energy and resource demands of the global digital infrastructure - from large data centers to everyday activities such as sending emails or streaming content.
According to the International Energy Agency and UNEP, the ICT sector is currently responsible for about 3.7-4% of global CO₂ equivalent emissions, with an estimated growth rate of 6% per year if efficiency and offsetting policies are not adopted. This represents a contribution comparable to that of the entire civil aviation industry.
Data centers, which power the cloud and our digital assets, consume about 1% of the world’s electricity, and up to 20% of that energy is used solely for cooling (Uptime Institute, 2021).
Even everyday behaviors are not immaterial: widespread estimates indicate that sending a “simple” email can generate about 0.3 g of CO₂e, while attachments can increase the footprint to tens of grams per message (depending on size and network path).
For this very reason, Karma Metrix was built to calculate the digital footprint of companies, offer a clear breakdown of their emissions, and propose optimization strategies that reduce energy consumption and improve performance, including in marketing to brand reputation.
The integration of Karma Metrix into the Green Future Project Group marks a decisive step toward true corporate sustainability.
Green Future Project has always supported companies to measure and reduce their corporate carbon footprint and now, thanks to Karma Metrix, it is also able to offer solutions for reducing a company’s digital footprint.
Together, the two entities enable companies to: