Climate Emergency Network UAL

The Climate Emergency Network website was designed and developed by Emil Woudenberg and Johanna de Verdier, working alongside a team at University of the Arts London, bringing together expertise in queer urgent publishing, ecological design, and digital accessibility. The project set out to reduce the carbon footprint of web publishing while still delivering an engaging editorial experience, recognising that while the most climate-friendly website is no website at all, there remains an urgent need to publish ethically and quickly to support community responses to the climate emergency.

Every design decision was measured against that tension. The site runs on a custom-built WordPress installation, hosted by Eco Web Hosting, and stores all fonts and assets locally to avoid reliance on third-party servers. Inspired by Low-Tech Magazine, Johanna developed a custom compression tool using the ImageMagick PHP extension to automatically dither images uploaded to the media library, dramatically reducing file sizes by simulating colour through pattern rather than full-colour data. Lazy loading ensures that images and scripts are only downloaded when they become visible in the browser window.

A dark background design reduces screen energy consumption, while two variable fonts Source Sans and Source Serif replace multiple separate font files with single, open-source alternatives. The site is also built for portability, using an open CMS so it can be migrated to greener hosting as better options emerge.

Accessibility is built into the core structure through semantic HTML, appropriate contrast ratios, keyboard navigation, and screen reader compatibility, supplemented by a customisable overlay. The result is a site cleaner than 86% of web pages globally, according to the Website Carbon Calculator.