Our Environmental Commitment

Our Environmental Commitment

18 Nov 2025

Environmental responsibility matters to us. As an AI-powered education platform, we want to be transparent about our environmental impact, what we have done so far, and how we plan to improve.

Where We Stand Today

We estimate that the average Medly student generates approximately 667 grams of CO₂e per year.

We calculated this by taking our total estimated annual emissions across all operations (infrastructure, office, commuting, and cloud computing) and dividing by our active user base. This is a rough figure, not a third-party audited number, and we share it in the spirit of transparency rather than precision. As we grow, we intend to commission independent verification.

To put 667g in context using UK Government emissions factors[1]:

• A return economy flight from London to New York produces approximately 1.5 tonnes (1,500,000g) of CO₂e per passenger
• A return short-haul flight within the UK produces approximately 200kg (200,000g) of CO₂e per passenger
• Driving a petrol car for 4km produces roughly the same amount

A full year of AI-powered tutoring on Medly produces about the same amount of CO₂e as a short car journey.

Infrastructure, energy and resources

Efficient data centres: Medly runs on Google Cloud rather than on data centres we own. Google reports an average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.10 across its data centres, compared with an industry average of around 1.56[2]. PUE measures how much additional energy a data centre uses to support its computing equipment, including cooling.

Renewable energy: The data centres that host Medly are powered through Google Cloud's renewable energy programme. Google says it matches 100% of its annual electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases, a commitment it has maintained since 2017[2]. This is annual matching; it does not mean every facility is supplied with carbon-free electricity every hour.

Using resources carefully: Our data centres do not use water to cool their servers. We also reduce unnecessary computing by routing requests to smaller AI models when they can deliver the quality students need. We cannot yet quantify the resulting savings, but using only the computing a task needs helps limit demand.

Medly Footprint: environmental action chosen by our community

Medly Footprint is our ongoing commitment to fund environmental projects selected by Medly Pro users. In our first community vote, you guys chose two Gold Standard certified projects: reforestation through Nicaforest in Nicaragua, and access to cleaner, safer water in Cambodia. We've purchased credits across these projects to cover our estimated emissions from Q3 2025 through Q2 2026.

Funding projects is one part of our approach. We are also working to reduce our footprint at source by routing more requests to smaller models where they can maintain educational quality, and by exploring more efficient infrastructure for some predictable workloads. We’ll share updates on the blog and by email. Keep an eye on this space and check your inbox each quarter for the chance to have your say in the causes we support.

A Note on Comparisons

You may see companies compare their per-user emissions to social media platforms or streaming services. We have chosen not to do this because the comparisons are rarely like-for-like. A global social media company's total corporate emissions (offices, hardware manufacturing, employee travel across dozens of countries) divided by billions of users produces a per-user figure that is not meaningfully comparable to a small UK startup's cloud bill divided by its user base.

What we can say is that 667g of CO₂e per user per year is a small number in absolute terms. We want to make it smaller, and we will be transparent about our progress.

Transparency First

We are committed to sharing:

• Our emissions estimates and methodology
• Carbon offset investments and their verified impact
• Honest reporting when we fall short of our goals

We welcome questions about our environmental approach. If you think we can do better, or if you spot something in our numbers that does not add up, we want to hear from you.

To our students: your future matters, and we are committed to protecting it while helping you achieve your potential.

The Medly Team

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References

[1] UK Government GHG Conversion Factors for Company Reporting. Flight and vehicle emissions factors used throughout this article. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-conversion-factors-for-company-reporting

[2] Google Data Centers, Operating Sustainably. PUE of 1.10 (fleet-wide trailing twelve-month average) and annual renewable energy matching since 2017. https://datacenters.google/operating-sustainably/

Our 667g per-user figure is an internal estimate calculated by dividing total estimated annual company emissions by active users. It has not been independently audited. Vehicle comparisons use UK average petrol car emissions of approximately 170g CO₂e per km (DEFRA 2023 factors).