Sustainability

This page is a portal to information about the environmental sustainability status and efforts at the Wikimedia Foundation, including the Wikimedia projects, with additional information about the communities that participate in the projects.

Sustainability at the Wikimedia Foundation

Since 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation has been committed to conducting an annual greenhouse gas inventory, to assess the impacts of its data center sites, travel program, and employees’ day to day working environments (e.g., the San Francisco, USA office, commuting, and remote employees’ estimated home energy use). Our inventory is developed according to the WRI/WBCSD Greenhouse Gas Protocol and includes our scope 1, scope 2, and all of our relevant scope 3 emissions, as defined below:

Scope 1: Direct greenhouse gas emissions that occur from sources controlled or owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. This has historically included natural gas consumption at our San Francisco office at Post Montgomery. Because our new office space at One Sansome does not burn natural gas onsite, our scope 1 emissions were reduced to zero in calendar year 2024.
Scope 2: Indirect emissions associated with the purchase of electricity, steam, heat, or cooling. This includes electricity and steam used at the San Francisco office.
Scope 3: Indirect emissions resulting from activities from assets not owned or controlled by the Wikimedia Foundation, but that we indirectly impact through our operations. Scope 3 emissions include all sources not within our scope 1 and 2 boundary. These include water usage and waste (landfill, recycling, compost) at the San Francisco office; electricity used by our global data center vendors; staff business travel and WMF-sponsored volunteer travel (including, as of 2024, a portion of our Conference Grant Portfolio); commuting; and as of 2022, energy related to remote work.

Recent improvements in reporting

As part of our commitment to sustainability, we are continually looking for ways to better capture our environmental impact and to improve the accuracy of our reporting. Notable changes since 2019 include:

Updating our data center emissions methodology in 2021 to reflect the emission factors of the grids where our data centers operate rather than the procurement decisions of our vendors (i.e., PPAs, RECs). This resulted in a 75% increase in reported data center-related emissions between 2020 and 2021. Please see our 2021 report for more information.
Expanding our scope 3 emissions boundaries:
- In our 2022 report, we started accounting for employees’ remote work impacts (e.g., estimated home energy use and their commutes to alternative workspaces), which increased our emissions by approximately 500 mtCO2e in that year.
- In our 2024 report, we started accounting for travel emissions associated with a portion of our Conference Grant Portfolio. Previously, due to data collection limitations, we have only been able to account for travel emissions associated with WMF Staff or Board attendance at these events. However, the Foundation’s Travel Team began directly managing scholar flight and hotel bookings for a portion of these conferences in 2024, such that we now have access to travel emissions data. As we continue to increase our support for these conferences, we will gain a more accurate understanding of the emissions associated with our Conference Grant Portfolio.

Emissions Data

Emissions (mtCO₂e)	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
Scope 1	2.81	2.18	0.47	0.47	0.63	0.66	0.00
Scope 2	details not available	86.44	57.23	15.73	16.26	18.97	12.95
Scope 3	details not available	2,344.72	1,111.74	1,074.18	2,914.35	3,926.38	4,195.49

Total Emissions	2,867.86	2,433.34	1,169.44	1,090.38	2,931.24	3,946.01	4,208.44

For a more detailed look at our emissions, methodology, and source data over time, please see our reports.

Contextualizing the Current Numbers

In 2024, our scope 1, 2, and newly expanded scope 3 emissions totaled 4,208 metric tons of Co2-equivalent. Excluding the newly added Conference Grant portfolio, this represents a 2% increase from the previous year. Emissions from our data center sites increased 23% year over year, with most of that increase being offset by a reduction in ordinary business travel emissions. Working Environment emissions, which are mainly impacted by the number of staff working remotely, remained relatively stable, decreasing by 1%. The decrease was attributable to the Foundation’s move into a smaller office space. Because our new office building does not burn natural gas onsite, this move also decreased our scope 1 emissions to zero.

Intensity Metrics


Functional Area		2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
Climate Content₁	Pageviews	not available	not available	not available	324M	346M	340M	364M
Climate Content₁	Articles	not available	not available	not available	26,000	30,853	35,318	38,431
Office Emissions	tCO₂e office related (facility/operation activities)	1.70 per SF-based staff	1.62 per SF-based staff	0.77 per SF-based staff (see note 2)	n/a due to limited use of San Francisco Offsite
Travel Emissions₂	tCO₂e from internal staff convenings/employee	not available	1.84	n/a-covid	n/a-covid	1.33	1.40	1.53
Data Centers Emissions	kgCO₂e / 1M pageviews₃	5.63	3.05	2.29	4.05	4.18	4.60	5.77
Data Centers Emissions	kWh / 1M pageviews₃	13.55	12.41	11.26	11.86	13.54	14.37	18.37

Climate Change Pageviews were calculated on all articles in English Wikipedia belonging to WikiProject Climate change and their corresponding articles in all other language-versions of Wikipedia via its Wikidata item. This includes pageviews from all redirect-pages of an article.
Previous intensity metrics have been restated here as travel emissions (from internal staff convenings) per employee. Internal Staff Convenings help us support a distributed workforce and include travel to internally-facing events such as All Hands, team offsites, onboarding sessions, and office visits.
On all Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia.

Reports

Wikimedia Foundation Environmental Sustainability Metrics 2024

Wikimedia Foundation Environmental Sustainability Metrics 2023 • 2023 Year in Review Diff post

Wikimedia Foundation Environmental Sustainability Report 2022

Wikimedia Foundation Environmental Sustainability (Carbon Footprint) Report for 2021

2020 Wikimedia Foundation Carbon Footprint report

Wikimedia Foundation 2019 Annual Carbon Footprint Report

Wikimedia Foundation 2018 Sustainability Assessment and Carbon Footprint

Wikimedia Foundation sustainability timeline: reports, resolutions and more

2025

Environmental Sustainability Metrics 2024

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

Wikimedia Foundation Data Center Supplementary information

This data was collected by Strategic Sustainability Consulting during 2020 and 2021 for the Foundation's annual carbon footprint report research.

Words from Wikimedia affiliates

See Wikimedia Affiliates Environmental Sustainability Covenant.

Facts from Wikimedia affiliates

Direct energy usage

In 2016, Wikimedia Italia was the first known Wikimedia entity to switch to 100 % renewable electricity usage for its office. See Wikimedia offices for more information.

Carbon divestment

In 2018, Wikimedia Italia was the known first Wikimedia entity to adopt a sustainable financial investment policy. Implementation started in 2019 and was reversed by a new board in January 2021 (information not yet official pending up to date financial reports).

Scope 3 emissions

Little information is available on scope 3 emissions caused by chapter activities.

Chapter meetings are often arranged to maximise the usage of public transportation, but some geographies are more challenging than others. Local work, such as photo documentation of remote places, may necessarily entail some level of fossil-powered travel.

Value-driven tooling can improve sustainability even while keeping activities largely the same. Some Wikimedia entities give priority to efficient free software and reused hardware to decrease power usage from the participants' devices.

Other agenda 2030 work

In 2017, Wikimedia Italia started its work with Asvis on Sustainable Development Goals with a focus on goal 17 through the increase of open data.