Fershad Irani - Writing

An impact framework for the Web Sustainability Guidelines

2026-07-12T00:00:00Z

Last year I attended TPAC 2025 in Kobe. A big part of my time there was spent in conversations about the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSGs) with members of the Sustainable Web Interest Group who were there in person and online.

Through these conversations, it became apparent that the guidelines were lacking a means for people to assess their impact. At the time, there were over 80 guidelines, and the guidelines document was a long read (still is, tbh). A refrain I heard a lot was "People are asking 'where should I begin? what are the most impactful things I can do, now, with these guidelines?' I had been apart of a few metrics related calls earlier in 2025 which was trying to tackle this, though coming up with a single metric (or set of metrics) which could encapsulate the extremely broad scope of the guidelines proved tough.

In one of our Interest Group meetings at TPAC this topic came up again. During that, I put my hand up to create some kind of framework that could help give people coming to the guidelines some method for prioritisation so they might know where to start.

That work came together in a pull request in December last year with a first draft of an impact rating framework for the WSGs. This draft include impact scores for each guideline across the categories of "people", "planet", and "prosperity", as well as impact timeframe. For each, I also included a brief rationale for the scoring provided. That wasn't easy, given how broad the guidelines are. Plenty of time was spent head scratching.

Thankfully, with the PR published, the interest group swung into action. Over the next few months, that framework was refined thanks to the feedback from members of the working group - big shout outs to Siddesh, Susannah, Emma, Andy, Nick, Thorsten, and Tim for their feedback across the various sections. With the review complete, Tzviya, Hidde, Alex, and Rose turned what was a shoddily written Google Doc and messy spreadsheet into a web page ready to be published alongside the WSGs - the Web Sustainability Guidelines Impact Measurement document.

Opinions will differ

It should be acknowledged that there are still large gaps in our ability to assess and quantify sustainability impacts of digital activities. So there is a degree of "expert opinion" and subjectivity in these impact ratings. You probably will find some that you disagree with - that's fine. If you do, then give the rationale a read. If you still disagree, then there are a few things you can do:

Get involved with the W3C and the Web Sustainability Interest group
Raise an issue on GitHub with constructive feedback, suggestions, and proposed changes
Share the impact ratings with others who might have domain knowledge and who can contribute through the two ways mentioned above

While opinions about individual impact ratings may differ, one thing I'm really proud of about this artefact is that it, in my opinion, has achieved what it sets out to - to make the WSGs as little bit more approachable by having a way to prioritise them based on impact categories, timeline, or overall impact score. I've also heard on the grapevine that some other Interest Groups in the W3C have seen the document and wish they had something similar for what they're doing. I'm glad the Sustainable Web Interest Group was able to get this published, and hope folks find it useful!

Nobody cares

2026-03-31T00:00:00Z

I recently learnt about the closure of CarbonRunner, a service that aimed to enable running of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) in the cleanest available region (in terms of grid carbon intensity). The idea behind CarbonRunner was a sensible one - location shifting the running of automated workloads to the cleanest available location should result in a lower carbon impact from these tasks. This vibes with the ideas we explored last year in our Grid-aware Websites project.

The CarbonRunner website today has a few short paragraphs announcing the closure of the platform. These are grouped under three headings, which explain the reasons behind the closure. The first of these headings is "Nobody cares".

Nobody cares
Building environmental based products is hard because nobody really cares. People care about money, they don't seem to care about environmental savings, even if they're faster

This theme gets carried forward in to the second point:

The cost of switching is too high
Switching services takes a lot of mental energy, it requires due-diligence, plenty of testing and teams that want to embrace it. Going back to point #1, software developers, on the whole, do not care about carbon savings, even if it would have been the easiest thing to swap over their CI jobs. Software developers do not have to think about the carbon emissions of each function they write.

People care but the incentives are not there

The two statements above feel loaded with emotion. I get it. The team behind CarbonRunner put loads of time and effort into building and promoting their product. It sucks to see all that work fall flat. But the sentiment that "nobody cares" doesn't truly reflect the reality.

People care, but their ability to influence their organisation's decisions is limited. At the level of the decision makers, there just isn't the incentive to care enough about digital sustainability. I saw this in action at the W3C's TPAC event last year, where I had multiple conversations about web sustainability with individuals from a number of large web technology companies (and not just Google, Microsoft, and Apple). However none of those large organisations are actively engaged in the process of developing the Web Sustainability Guidelines, at least as far as I'm aware. Despite their own sustainability claims, they just don't have the incentive to work on sustainability on the web in way they do for, say, performance.

Selling sustainability is tough

This, again, is anecdotal. After around 6 years focusing on digital sustainability I've seen a good share of many a web sustainability focused company come and go. From analytics platforms, to ones like CarbonRunner focused on developer tooling, a common theme has been that "there's not enough interest to make this viable". I think that's going to keep being the case until there are genuine incentives for organisations to care about digital sustainability.

At the moment, if you're in the carbon reporting game - providing carbon emissions data to organisations for their annual reports - then there might be something in it for you. That's where the legislation is at the moment - "show us your data". Legislation is a large driver of organisational incentives when it comes to sustainability. I'd love to see web standards or customer demand replace that, but I just can't see that happening. What non-reporting based legislation there is around digital services these days seems to focus on efficiency, but is targeted at data centers and large energy consumers rather than smaller organisations and workloads.

Unfortunately, I feel that in the years to come, we will continue to see that selling sustainability as an add-on to a larger product might be a feasible strategy. But solely sustainability focused products will remain a hard sell. Not because nobody cares, but because the incentives just aren't there to drive organisational adoption.

2025 in review

2026-01-10T20:30:00Z

I understand this might be a bit late for a year in review. We've had a lot of Touch stuff going on here in Taipei for the last couple of weeks, and tonight is my first chance to sit down with the cat and get this written.

2025 was a year on the go, with (mostly work related) travel throughout the year. It was also a year of catching up with old friends from Taiwan in their new homes overseas, and meeting a whole bunch of internet friends for the first time at conferences and events. Unlike 2024, which was a World Cup year, Touch took a bit of a back seat for most of the year and with it so did whatever fitness I'd build up in the year prior.

Personal

Once again on the personal front 2025 was a quiet year, which bodes well ... right? For family, my sister got married earlier in the year, which gave our family a chance to be together for a few days for the first time in a while. On the other end of the spectrum, the year ended with the passing of my partner's grandmother. She was 101 years old, and had moved to Taiwan in the 1940s from Fujian province. We've spent the time with family, helping prepare items for the ceremonies that are performed per the Taoist tradition.

Travel

Places I visited in 2025 (in no order): Sydney, Katoomba, Mudgee, Orange, Melbourne, Singapore, Zurich, Lucerne, Munich, Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam, Tokyo, Chiba, Hiroshima, Kurashiki, Kyoto, Kinosaki Onsen, Tottori, Matsue, Izumo, Taichung, Nantou, Bangkok.

I am way behind on getting the rolls of film I shot in all these places developed. There's some colour stuff from Switzerland and Australia, as well as some black and whites from Tokyo up on https://film.fershad.com, but still a heap more to come. I've put a few into this post though.

Meeting friends old and new

A big part of traveling this year was attending various conferences to speak about Grid-aware Websites. Other trips included time in Europe with the Green Web Foundation team, and TPAC 2025.

The time in Europe was definitely a highlight, where I spent time in Zurich, Munich, and the Netherlands. During 3 weeks on the road, I was able to catch up with a few old friends, meet a few internet friends IRL, and making some new friends as well.

Many of the highlights came from the summer in Europe, during a pleasant heat wave (pleasant for someone coming from East Asia). Spending a few days in Zurich catching up with two former colleagues and their new born was by far the best of the bunch. Meeting Romain Jacob, Michael Oghia, as well as Hidde de Vries and family in person were all great times. And, of course, catching up with all the folks I work with at the Green Web Foundation for a few amazing days in Munich was very special.

Finally, no trip to Europe would be complete without some Touch. I spent a week bouncing around the Netherlands doing some work and mixing in training sessions with the Dutch Mens National Team and clubs in Amsterdam, Den Haag, and Rotterdam.

Work

There's been a lot happening in Green Web Foundation land this year, and I've been lucky to be part of a nice chunk of it.

Grid-aware Websites

Most of my year was spent working on the Grid-aware Websites project. I'm really pleased with what we were able to achieve with the help of our funding from SIDN. We were able to work on delivering a core code library, and starters for working with both Cloudflare Workers and Netlify Edge Functions.

Most pleasing was being able to deploy grid-awareness to the Branch magazine website as part of a design refresh. It was a really stressful time getting the redesign planned, implemented, and tested while balancing travel and conference speaking. Probably not something we'd want to try again (he says now), but definitely worth the hard yards.

Through the year, I also gave three talks promoting the project in Singapore, Melbourne, and Amsterdam. Although we weren't finished with the project at the time I did those talks, they presented a great chance for me to refine my thinking about the project and to hear the thoughts for new audiences.

2026

2026 is shaping up as a landmark year for Touch in Taiwan. We are in the process of preparing to send two teams to an international tournament for the first time - with plans for a Womens and Mens Open teams to travel to Australia for a tournament in April. This will take up a lot of my spare time through the first half of the year, as I'll be coaching (and maybe playing for) the Mens Open team.

On the work front, we're working our way through finalising some important updates to our provider verification process which we plan to get public feedback on shortly. Besides that, we're also continuing to work on the carbon.txt project, and I'll be involved with that in a variety of ways.

I also might have been bitten by the TPAC bug following the recent session in Kobe. It's a long way away, but I'm wondering if a trip to Dublin might be on the cards for TPAC 2026 😅.

As always, if you're visiting Taiwan for work or play, let me know. There's so much to do, see, and eat (mostly eat, though) here. I'd love to show you around!

Monthly #23

2025-12-19T00:00:00Z

Lol these monthly posts are consistently getting done later in the month. At least that's consistent, right?

November 2025

🇯🇵 TPAC 2025 in Kobe, Japan. Having spent 3 weeks in Japan through October, I was back again in the second week of November for the W3C's annual TPAC gathering. It was a terrific experience, though was completely draining at the same time. Besides all the peopleing at the conference itself, I had a pretty decent shopping list from Kay of all the things we'd held off on buying on our holiday to Japan which I was supposed to pick up this time around. I knew the supermarkets & shopping streets of Kobe's Sannomiya area pretty well by the end of the week.

I've written more about my time at TPAC in Reflections on TPAC 2025.

🏉 Coaching Youth Touch in Taipei. November also saw the start of the Touch season at the local American school here in Taipei. The girls at the school play Touch, while the boys play Rugby from November through to the end of January. This year I'm back coaching the Junior Varsity team, a challenging task given the wide skill range of the players in the squad, but one that is always rewarding as players develop through the course of the short season.

This year, for the first time, our team also has an end of season tournament which we are training towards! Exciting stuff for all involved.

Tracking start, stop, continue targets

These are my current Start, stop, continue items for 2025. I've made one change to the "Start", removing drinking a glass of water every morning (that's become habitual) and replaced it with a goal to get 2 days at the gym in each week for the rest of the year.

Start

Tracking habits daily: 😔 Nope. I'm canning this one, it's not going to happen.
Carrying a water bottle with me: 😔 Not really, as the temperatures have gone down a bit I don't feel the urge to hydrate while I'm out.
2 days at the gym each week: 😅 No, it's just not possible with coaching time being squeezed in around Green Web Foundation work.
Making a weekly "Links & Listens" list: 😅 Haven't updated the links page in a while, sorry.
Cooking more regularly: 😔 Nope.

Stop

Reaching for sugary (fizzy) drinks: 😔 Nope. Japan. Convenience stores.
Not waiting for things to be perfect before releasing them:😅 Nope. Working on some major changes to our verification process at work, which is probably something we'd want to have close to finalised before putting it out there~

Continue

Trying to get Touch into more local schools in Taiwan: 😔 Nope. Things have been quiet on this front.
Getting in a 20-30 minute walk during the day: 😄 Yes! Much walking around Kobe especially.

Let's get Power Profiling into Chromium DevTools

2025-11-25T00:00:00Z

This morning I wrote about how back in 2014/15 we almost had power profiling land in the Chromium DevTools.

Tonight, I've created a new ~~issue~~ feature request on crbug.com with the hope that it can get the ball rolling on getting power profiling into the Chromium DevTools within some timeframe that isn't tomorrow but also isn't never. Check it out at [Feature request] Power profiling to surface power and energy draw from browser and website use.

Help this get traction

If you care about this and think that power profiling should be in the Chromium DevTools, please visit the issue using the link above and give it a +1 (screenshot below). This help show that there is a desire for a broader community this kind of functionality to be part of DevTools.

Use the +1 button on the crbug issue page to show that having power profiling in Chromium is important for you.

Hopefully we're on the way to getting power profiling in multiple browsers. 🙏🏼

We nearly had power profiling in Chromium

2025-11-25T00:00:00Z

One of the things I learnt at TPAC 2025 is that the Chromium Issue Tracker (also known as "CRBUG") is a thing. More than just being a thing, it is (as the name might suggest) the place where you can raise bugs and issues you might encounter in Chromium browsers. Beyond that, it's also a place where ideas for new Chromium features can be raised, triaged, and tracked.

Chromium is the open source browser project that powers Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet, and a host of other browsers. Features built into Chromium might not always make their way into all the browsers that use it immediately (or ever), but it sure does make it much easier to get adoption.

So what's this about power profiling?

Since 2022 (Firefox 104), the Firefox browser has included the option for developers to capture "Power Profiles" from within its developer tools. This gives developers the means to get granular information about the energy being consumed by the browser as a website is used. In terms of front-end measurement for web sustainability, it is close to the best possible data folks can work with.

But Firefox is but one browser. Chromium-based browsers have by far the largest market share, and yet have little-to-no sustainability-related features built into their developer tooling at the time of writing.

So I was really surprised to find this closed issue on CRBUG from ... wait for it ... 20-friggen-14! In it, there seems to have been work done by folks at Google and Intel to include power profiling into the Chromium DevTools in a way that looks similar to what Firefox has now built. It appears as though code was committed to make this happen, but was then rolled back in 2015 after an "offline discussion".

Why this matters

Having the ability to capture a power profile on a website from within then browser opens up a whole new layer of information from both a sustainability and performance perspective. With power utilisation being shown alongside really detailed information such as stack traces and browser events, developers will be able to actually assess their code is having on real user devices.

Having the ability to capture power profiles across multiple browsers may even help improve the efficiency of those browsers themselves. Profiles of the same site across multiple browsers might shed light on areas in which the same code uses more or less power depending on the browser it is running in.

Probably most importantly though, it will allow us to start presenting the case for improving website sustainability backed by meaningful data rather than models.

I mean look at this screenshot from the case study that's linked in the description of the issue. To have this in the most widely used browsers on the planet would be a huge step forward for the frontend web sustainability community.

And yes, I did choose this screenshot on purpose because I'm all about fish power.

Inside jokes aside, discovering this has given me some hope that we might one day be able to get power profiling into Chromium browsers. It's been done before, why not try and land it again ~

Reflections on TPAC 2025

2025-11-23T00:00:00Z

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending the W3C's annual TPAC meeting.

TPAC?

TPAC is something I've heard about a lot through my time as a web developer as a place where folks gather to nerd out over web standards. It is a five day event, with a mix of detailed working/community/interest group meetings and breakout sessions for idea sharing.

TPAC 2025

TPAC 2025 was held in Kobe, Japan from November 10 - 14. It's a short hop from Taiwan. Conveniently, lined up with the weekend of the Japan Touch Nationals in Tokyo, which I was able to referee at before making my way down to Kobe.

I was attending TPAC as an Invited Expert and part of the Sustainable Web Interest Group (SWING). All my involvement with the group until this time has been asynchronous due to time differences. I'd had one off real-time conversations with people in the group, but never been involved in the more general group discussions or decision making. So TPAC 2025 was a great opportunity for me to meet some other SWIG members and be an active participant in the process of developing the Web Sustainability Guidelines.

I was also attending TPAC with my Green Web Foundation hat on. On this front I was keen to better understand how things get implemented in browsers, as well as better understand the topic of Verifiable Credentials and the role that might play in bringing greater transperancy and data access to the digital supply chain.

Highlights from TPAC 2025

Below is an unordered list of highlights from the week:

Spending the week chatting, hanging out, hunting for gifts, and sharing meals with the few Sustainable Web Interest Group members who were able to make their way to Kobe from all parts of the globe.
Chilling in the hallway and hearing all the different conversations going on about how certain features might be implemented in browsers, or written into standards, or other really nerdy stuff. All waaaay over my head, but cool to hear.
Finding out that there's a project to introduce Digital ID Wallets in Taiwan based on the W3C Verifiable Credentials standard. It's always nice to see Taiwan represented at large global events, and it was even better to be able to make a connection with Denken who's working on the project. We've already caught up again now that we're both home.
Conversations on the metro to the conference venue with Jake Archibald and Adam Argyle. These are two folks who's work I've followed (and has helped me out) for as long as I've been in web development, and it was great to jsut have a casual chat and say thanks.
Getting a much better understanding of what it takes to get features into the browser. Thanks to Barry Pollard for taking the time to explain that process to me.
Being able to speak with folks from all the major browsers about the kinds of web sustainability features we might be able to build, and again getting ideas from them as to the best way to move things forwards.
Catching up with my mate Christian, who's been living near Kobe for the past 7 years. We ~~worked~~ drank together in Taiwan, and it was great to reacquaint in Japan.

It was a fulfilling week, but an absolutely exhausting one too. I'm an introvert bro, and my battery was well and truly drained after it all (probably why it's taken so long to get this post out). That said, I'd do it all again if the opportunity presents itself~ ✌️

Monthly #22

2025-11-20T00:00:00Z

A suppppper late monthly this time around due to a very busy first few weeks of November squeezed in around a few bouts of sickness.

October 2025

🇯🇵 3 amazing weeks in Japan. For Kay and I, October was our big break month in 2025. We ventured to Japan, partly in order to meet up with my sister and her husband who were traveling there at around the same time. We met them for a day in Kyoto squeezed in between spending time in Hiroshima, Kurashiki, Kinosaki Onsen, Matsue, and Izumo.

It was a wonderful three weeks, visiting a few spots for the first time while also exploring some places we'd already visited a little deeper.

A definite highlight were the 6 days we spent in Matsue and Izumo, a part of Japan that neither Kay or I had been near before. Matsue in particular was such a chill city, with things operating at a pleasant pace, and some beautiful spots along the lakeside to spend the afternoon. We happened to be there in time to catch the end of the city's lantern festival around Matsue Castle, which included a really nice little open air night market.

I'd love to explore that region a bit more if time allows ~~

Tracking start, stop, continue targets

Start

Tracking habits daily: 😔 Nope. I'm canning this one, it's not going to happen.
Carrying a water bottle with me: 😄 Yes!
2 days at the gym each week: 😅 No, but I did get in a run every 3 days in Japan. Managed to get my pace down to 5:29/km which is pretty solid for me historically.
Making a weekly "Links & Listens" list: 😅 Haven't updated the links page in a while, sorry.
Cooking more regularly: 😔 Nope.

Stop

Reaching for sugary (fizzy) drinks: 😔 Nope. Japan's got some wild sodas in the convenience stores.
Not waiting for things to be perfect before releasing them:😅 Nope. Working on some major changes to our verification process at work, which is probably something we'd want to have close to perfect before putting it out there~

Continue

Trying to get Touch into more local schools in Taiwan: 😔 Nope. Things have been quiet on this front.
Getting in a 20-30 minute walk during the day: 😄 Yes! Much walking in Japan. Many sightseeing.

Meet me at TPAC 2025

2025-10-23T00:00:00Z

I'm really excited to be heading to Kobe, Japan next month for the W3C's annual TPAC conference. I'll be there as an individual invited expert, and am looking forwards to meeting some of the folks working in the Sustainable Web Interest Group in person. I'm also hopeful that my introvertedness won't get in the way of me having conversations with folks working across other W3C working groups, interest groups, and community groups who's knowledge might help unlock some of the projects we've got bubbling away at the Green Web Foundation.

If you'll be in Kobe from November 10 - 14 let me know, it'd be great to meet up!

Monthly #21

2025-10-10T00:00:00Z

September was a month for things to ramp down and other things to ramp up on the work front. Away from that, it was a pretty quiet month.

September 2025

👨🏼‍💻 As GAW ends, other stuff begins. The Grid-aware Websites (GAW) project has been the center of my attention at work for the last 12 months. I'm so proud of being able to build out the code library, deploy it to the Branch website, and work with Hannah and the outstanding group of individuals that we have in our advisory group. All that said, funding for the project ended in September and so we spent a lot of the month wrapping it up. There'll be a project reflection blog post that should come out sometime later this month which I'll share here too.

As GAW wrapped up, I shifted my attention to what will probably be my big project for the first half of 2026 which is to update the verification criteria we have at the Green Web Foundation. There'll be more about that on the Green Web Foundation blog in November so stay tuned over there.

🏉 Touch goals for 2026. There's a few international Touch tournaments coming up in 2026, and I'm still pretty keen to run around representing Taiwan as a player in those. As the body gets older though, it means that I need to start the preperation work a bit earlier to keep up with the pace of the game. The main aim is an Opens division tournament in Australia which I'm hoping to be selected for. With an eye to that, I've started getting in regular weekly gym sessions especially to build back the strength in my legs. October will be the month I begin supplementing that with some actual running, which I loathe.

Tracking start, stop, continue targets

Start

Tracking habits daily: 😔 Nope. I'm canning this one, it's not going to happen.
Carrying a water bottle with me: 😄 Yes!
2 days at the gym each week: 😅 Kinda. For two weeks, yes and for another two weeks I only managed one session.
Making a weekly "Links & Listens" list: 😅 Kinda. Not weekly, but I've got a links page which I'm now updating infrequently.
Cooking more regularly: 😔 Nope.

Stop

Reaching for sugary (fizzy) drinks: 😔 Kinda. It's hard during a brutal Taiwan summer with 7-11 around every corner!
Not waiting for things to be perfect before releasing them:😅 Kinda. I'm sitting on many project/writing ideas just because the time isn't there to do them.

Continue

Trying to get Touch into more local schools in Taiwan: 😔 Nope. Things have been quiet on this front.
Getting in a 20-30 minute walk during the day: 😄 Yes!