At Pixel Pioneers 2026, Nick Lewis will share how to design and build low-carbon websites. We sat down with him to find out how a glacier trip changed his outlook on his personal and work life, what he is working on with the W3C, why sustainability can lead to smarter digital design, and more
How did you become a sustainable web designer and developer?
It started slowly, around 2018. The previous year, whilst writing for my outdoor adventure blog, I was lucky enough to stand on three different glaciers dotted around the globe. I saw their climate change-accelerated decline firsthand. It highlighted the importance of climate action, a subject I had been researching and was increasingly interested in at the time.
Upon returning, I made some planet-positive changes in my personal life. Then over the following months, I started to ponder how I could bring some of these aspects into my work life – which at the time was within a creative agency.
This subject basically became my entire personality shortly afterwards.
I spent a number of years researching, experimenting, writing, and sharing ideas via multiple side projects on the subject (see lowwwcarbon.com, the-sustainable.dev, and The Climate Dictionary). And that still happens to this day.
You joined the W3C Sustainable Web Interest Group last year. How’s that going, and what have you been working on?
I did! While I had known of the group for a long time, it took me some years to feel like a worthy contributor and warrant joining the volunteer-led group. It’s full of incredibly knowledgeable people from a multitude of backgrounds.
Since joining, I have been a part of reviewing the initial draft, with a focus on the UX section – which actually covers everything from user experience, UI design, media, and optimisation. Plenty of meetings and discussions on GitHub issues have brought the Web Sustainability Guidelines into official Draft Note status. Soon, they will be under review for the next phase of becoming an official W3C statement. This is an exciting next step for everyone involved.
Can you share an example of when a sustainability constraint actually sparked a more creative or better user solution?
There have been a number of occasions that this has been the case! But perhaps the biggest learning curve and the most creative solutions so far have come from the Green Web Foundation’s grid-aware websites project.
Alongside a select group of peers, we worked on how we could create a useful, easily implementable solution for building electrical grid-aware websites. In short, this means that when a higher percentage of fossil fuels is used on the grid, the more optimised a website becomes.
Consider, for example, reducing media implementations, altering styling to reduce device energy consumption, or showing messaging that informs users and triggers thoughts on the climate impacts of the web.
There will be more on this subject in my talk!
How do you review the websites featured on lowwwcarbon.com, and how come the showcase actually shrank last year?
Before a website can be submitted, it must pass a series of automated checks. These review the website’s weight, how it’s built, and its hosting – whether it’s renewably powered or not.
If the website passes, it can be submitted with some additional details. It then goes through my personal (human) testing. I check for accessibility requirements, content, and suitability against the whole criteria. It’s somewhat labour-intensive, but fun at the same time. No website gets a free pass.
Websites are also periodically re-tested against the automated checks. This prompted a cull of websites last year because the websites no longer met the base criteria. Lots of websites had grown in size. Quite a few had implemented huge images or autoplaying videos. A couple had changed design entirely, and were no longer accessible in the slightest.
It’s good to check back in over time and to have a spring clean. This is especially true for a website showcase like this one, which aims to highlight the best of the best in terms of sustainable website design and development.
What can we expect to take away from your talk at Pixel Pioneers?
I would love for people to leave the talk feeling excited. Perhaps inspired to try their own sustainable web design and development. To talk to clients about it. To understand that it isn’t a burden on creativity. That it’s an important part of our digital future, and one that presents unique challenges and interesting outcomes.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
This is a very tough question. But one thing springs to mind:
Be present. Take a moment. Think before you act.
I feel like this is good advice for many areas of life. It helps you to take stock of what is happening in front of you. To take a breath, allowing the body and mind to calm. Then, with thought, you can act accordingly.
At Pixel Pioneers Bristol 2026, Nick Lewis will talk about designing and building low-carbon websites. The conference will also cover new CSS and JavaScript features safe to use in your projects today, making music with HTML, creating web layouts with both code and UI design tools, and more. Get your ticket today!