WebP is pretty green! In most cases, it will really save on bandwidth, but when it’s using lossless compression, it’s often not the most efficient in terms of power consumption. Here are some interesting tests Olivier Philippot of Greenspector ran in 2017 to determine the relative efficiency of different image and compression formats. And here’s Tom Greenwood of Wholegrain Digital explaining to Gerry McGovern how many other sources of pollution and atmospheric carbon there are, particularly in server hardware.
