Faster, Leaner, Greener: 10x Lower Website Carbon Emissions - DjangoCon US 2024

This conference talk from DjangoCon US 2024 explores how to significantly reduce carbon emissions from Django websites. Begin with a quantitative assessment of thousands of Django websites to understand the ecosystem's overall emissions and identify which aspects contribute most to power and resource usage. Examine djangoproject.com as a case study of a high-traffic website with a substantial carbon footprint, using performance testing, power measurement, and static analysis tools to identify improvement opportunities. Learn about the energy consumption differences between front-end technologies like React, HTMX, and vanilla JS; how design choices including light vs. dark mode, image assets, and fonts affect emissions; serverless Django options for reducing application server emissions; how SQLite and other "serverless" database options can lower environmental impact; and the overlap between emissions reduction and common Django performance considerations. Presented by Thibaud Colas, this 25-minute talk provides practical strategies to make Django websites faster, leaner, and more environmentally friendly.