Assessment & Audit
For organizations that need to know where their digital emissions actually come from.
You can't reduce what you haven't measured. And most organizations haven't measured it.
Digital technology is responsible for about 4% of global emissions, and that number keeps climbing. Yet for most organizations, their digital footprint remains invisible. It's the emissions from their websites, apps, platforms, cloud infrastructure, and employee devices, and none of it surfaces anywhere obvious. It's not on a utility bill or a travel expense report. It sits unaccounted for, in the gap between IT and sustainability teams.
That gap is closing fast. Under the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), large companies are already required to report Scope 3 emissions, and digital services fall squarely within that scope. Comparable expectations are emerging for Canadian and UK organizations through procurement standards and climate disclosure rules. Regulators, investors, and procurement teams are asking questions that organizations can't yet answer.
A baseline comes first. Everything else builds on it.
What a Digital Environmental Assessment gives you
A credible, actionable picture of your digital footprint, across your website, your platforms, your infrastructure, and your organization. Not as an abstract estimate, but as a prioritized set of findings your teams can act on immediately.
Specifically, you get:
- A baseline emissions estimate for your digital products and services, grounded in recognized methodologies (Sustainable Web Design Model, GHG Protocol)
- A prioritized list of improvements ranked by environmental impact and implementation effort, so your team focuses on what actually moves the needle
- Business context for each recommendation, covering cost efficiency, performance, risk reduction, and regulatory alignment
- A foundation for reporting that can feed into CSRD disclosures, ESG impact reports, or internal sustainability tracking
- A clear bridge to action, recommendations are designed to be handed directly to your Build or Strategy & Consulting engagement, not filed and forgotten
Our services
Website Audit
A focused digital environmental assessment of your public website. We analyze page-level emissions, hosting infrastructure, front-end efficiency, and design choices, then deliver ranked, actionable recommendations.
Best if: you're just starting out and want a clear picture of where you stand and what to prioritize first.
Deliverables: emissions baseline, page-level carbon ratings, prioritized recommendations by impact and effort, implementation roadmap
Timeline: 2 to 4 weeks
Multiple Services Audit
An end-to-end digital environmental assessment covering both customer-facing and internal digital services. We evaluate your front-end, back-end, and design choices across multiple products, giving you a consolidated view of your digital footprint rather than a website-only snapshot.
Best if: your organization runs several digital services for customers and employees and needs a unified assessment with cross-service recommendations.
Deliverables: emissions baseline per service, cross-service analysis, consolidated prioritized recommendations across front-end, back-end, and design
Timeline: 3 to 6 weeks
Organization-Wide Audit
The most comprehensive digital environmental assessment we offer. In addition to all digital services, we evaluate your cloud infrastructure, IT equipment, and employee digital usage, giving your organization a full picture of its digital environmental footprint across every scope.
Best if: you have multiple digital products and services and need an assessment that covers cloud infrastructure, hardware, back-end, front-end, and design, typically to feed into ESG reporting or a broader sustainability strategy.
Deliverables: full organizational digital emissions baseline across all scopes, service-level and infrastructure-level analysis, recommendations mapped to regulatory frameworks (CSRD, GHG Protocol), strategic roadmap
Timeline: 4 to 8 weeks
Material and Economic Dependencies
An end-to-end, material and economic assessment of your digital activities. We cover digital-related demand from the metals your devices depend on to the data centers and semiconductor foundries behind them. You get a consolidated view of your material and economic dependencies.
Timeline: 8 to 12 weeks
Performed in partnership with Hubblo.
Net environmental assessment
The most comprehensive impact assessment we offer including social and economic impacts and risks. We assess the direct and indirect impacts of your solutions. Now and in the future.
Timeline: 8 to 12 weeks
Performed in partnership with Hubblo.
How it works
01. Scoping call
We learn about your digital estate: which services you run, who maintains them, what reporting obligations you have, and what you already know about your footprint. This shapes which audit tier fits your situation.
02. Data collection
We gather the inputs needed for assessment: traffic data, infrastructure details, tech stack information. We use a combination of automated tools and manual analysis. You won't need to build anything; we work with what you have.
03. Assessment
We analyze your digital services against established methodologies, including the Sustainable Web Design Model, Life Cycle Assessment principles for digital, and applicable GHG Protocol categories.
04. Recommendations
You receive a clear, prioritized report. Every recommendation includes: what to fix, why it matters (environmental and business impact), and how hard it is to implement. No jargon-heavy summaries, just findings your teams can act on.
What this enables
A Digital Environmental Assessment is the foundation everything else rests on. Without it, sustainability commitments in digital are aspirational at best.
With it:
- Your engineering and design teams have specific targets to work toward
- Your sustainability team has defensible data for ESG and CSRD reporting
- Your leadership team can make investment decisions based on actual emissions, not assumptions
- Your next digital project starts with a baseline instead of a blank page
"Given the rapid growth of generative AI in the audiovisual sector, we have observed a lack of practical tools and data to help industry professionals better understand, measure, and reduce its environmental footprint.
Decarbonade’s expertise and the quality of our collaboration enabled us to transform complex technical challenges into accessible resources for the industry."
This is the right fit if
- You have sustainability commitments that need to include your digital footprint
- Your ESG or CSRD reporting currently has a gap where digital emissions should be
- You've done training on digital sustainability but don't yet know where your biggest emissions actually come from
- You want to reduce your digital footprint but don't know where to start
Not sure which tier fits? If you're uncertain whether a Website Audit or an Organization-Wide Audit is right for your context, reach out. We'll ask you a few questions and recommend the right scope, without overselling.
Start with an audit
Or email us directly at info@decarbonade.co to describe your needs
and we'll come back with a recommendation.
EXPLORE MORE SERVICES
An assessment is most valuable when it leads somewhere. After your audit, we can move directly into coaching your team or implementing changes, or into embedding findings into a broader organizational roadmap.