Explore frog’s Green Tech Radar

Creating a greener web has never been more urgent. There are simple principles we can follow to ensure that our digital products and services are more sustainable. First, since digital technology uses electricity as a resource, it’s key that we use electricity efficiently. Second, we should ensure that, where possible, the electricity powering our technology comes from renewable sources. And third, we can offset any greenhouse gas emissions emerging from our use of technology.

However, applying these principles can quickly become challenging, with myriad questions emerging, such as:

• Do we need to make a decisive choice between a rich web experience and sustainability?
• Is it possible to meet our environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments while investing in energy intensive new technologies like Gen AI?
• Is the ability to create a truly sustainable web in conflict with the desire to provide engaging, interactive online experiences?

Sustainable technology is one of our favorite topics at frog, and we’re constantly seeking answers to big questions like the above. For us, taking care to ensure our internet and the connected world has a place in the sustainable, post-fossil fuel economy of the future is one of the most important technology frontiers to address. We define sustainable technology as technology that is designed specifically to remedy, prevent or improve environmental issues. Sustainability is more than a buzzword, it is the beginning of a new way of thinking and working.

So, how can we navigate from the current digital web—where there’s a tendency to use energy liberally, and sometimes perhaps a little thoughtlessly—to a more efficient, mindful internet. How could our web add as little as possible to global CO2 emissions, or even work towards reversing climate harm and improving biodiversity?

Seeking the answers to this challenge is the reason we created frog’s Green Tech Radar.

What is a tech radar?

Tech radars are a recognized method for visualizing opinions on technological innovations. The radar format suggests a navigational tool, which in the sustainability space can be used to point us in the direction of travel towards building energy efficient, low emission digital technology. The original tech radar was developed by Thoughtworks, who have been updating it every six months for over a decade. They do this with the intention to help decision makers understand emerging technologies and trends that affect the market today. Thoughtworks have also created an open-source tool for building your own radar and many others have used the radar technique to map out trends and emerging technology.

Discover frog’s Green Tech Radar

The Green Tech Radar has three rings: Adopt, Explore and Avoid. The tools and techniques in the ‘Adopt’ ring are the ones which we recommend and either currently use or intend to use. The ‘Explore’ ring contains tools and techniques we are actively researching and trying out, but we have yet to reach a decision on whether to adopt. ‘Avoid’ contains those which we have decided are inefficient, wasteful or tend to contribute to the use of energy generated from fossil fuels.

In addition to the rings, you’ll find four quadrants, which group together what we believe to be the areas of consideration for creating sustainable digital applications:

• • Architecture and Backend explores how the way we structure our applications can have an impact on energy-efficiency.
  • Design and Frontend looks at how the decisions we make in displaying and sharing content can affect not only the energy usage of our own applications, but also the energy consumption of our users’ devices.
  • Low Carbon Hosting examines how we can deploy our applications to use low carbon or renewable energy as much as possible. Hosting is linked to Architecture and Backend, but since it represents one of the most impactful ways of reducing the carbon footprint of our applications, we think it warrants its own section.
  • Measurement and Tools surveys one of the more nascent areas of sustainable software development. Measurement enables us to check the carbon impact of our applications and helps us to manage energy budgets, while effective tooling shows the impact of the changes we implement. There are currently few tools which are dedicated to this purpose and the techniques which lead to a high degree of accuracy are yet to be known or standardized.

What’s next?

The Green Tech Radar has already been valuable for us as it has supported the generation of conversations and knowledge-sharing. It is being used by technology leaders as a guide either when they are starting a new initiative to create a new application or starting an effort to make existing digital products more sustainable. The radar can also be used when reviewing the success of sustainable software initiatives.

This radar represents a step forward on a longer journey. Setting out the information in this way helps to inform our decisions and to set the intention of where we want to go. The real work of reaching the destination of a truly sustainable web, confirmed by data, will take many more steps.

It’s also important to acknowledge that we at frog, like our clients and partners, are navigating a transition into the eco-digital era. While the Green Tech Radar tool page itself is efficient, much of the frog site could be improved. We’re in the process of integrating the learnings that are present in the Green Tech Radar into all practices with clients, as well as developing frog.co to be more sustainable. In the Green Tech Radar, you can switch between light and dark modes by toggling the sun and moon icons. Dark mode may use less energy on many devices, making it a potentially lower-carbon option. Another area where we’ve made progress and experimented in our own digital space includes a reduced carbon mode for our Chief Challenges episode: Going Beyond Sustainability

The frog Green Tech Radar is a living document, and we will continue to update the radar as our understanding of best practice in the space evolves. The technology and techniques described can only represent our current thinking, but there is still so much learning to be done. We’d love to be able to incorporate a lens on accessibility and inclusion
into the Green Tech Radar eventually. As technology advances, we can expect to see improvements in the approaches available to us. In the meantime, we’ll continue to use the approaches, defining the technology and techniques to be used to aid organizations to create sustainability plans for their own digital futures.

frog Green Tech Radar Team
Sean Robbins, Technology Lead, frog UK
Gareth Scrivens, Head of Experience Engineering, frog UK
Lachlan McDonald, Technology Director, frog UK