As the number of web hosting companies continues to grow, the need to implement measures to reduce carbon footprints created by hosting companies also increases. The world population is becoming increasingly aware of the environmental impact these companies are having and are starting to look for greener options in their hosting choices. The company that is quickest to implement one of several ways to offset their carbon footprint is the one that will end up with the lion’s share of hosting customers.
Carbon Credits
One simple way to implement a greener style of hosting is by purchasing carbon credits. A carbon credit is equal to one ton of carbon. It allows the company to compensate for its greenhouse gas emissions with an equal or greater amount in funding for reducing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In some cases, this can even involve reforestation efforts. Cr8change.org is one such company that does just that with planting one tree every month for every customer that has a hosted account with them. They are already creating a difference in California which has had its forests devastated on a yearly basis with wildfires.
Green Tags
Green tags are another great way to offset a company’s carbon footprint. These are also known as Renewable Energy Certificates. The hosting company purchases these tags and the energy that is delivered to their power grid is certain of being from a green source – wind, solar or hydro power. A company that can tout being a 300% green web hosting company is GreenGeeks. They purchase three times the amount of energy they consume in wind energy credits.
Other Ways
Other ways to go green are to use energy friendly server setups or virtualization. To cut down energy consumption, the server company could house two servers within the same box and have the box use one power source thereby cutting down the total amount of power consumed. In the case of virtualization, several hosting customers use the same server – paring down the number of servers needed and reducing overall energy consumption. Many hosting companies choose the virtualization option simply due to it being an easier system implementation and no extra cost being output by the company.
Some companies are going one step beyond and directly using green sources. One such company is Solar Energy Host. Their service is entirely powered by energy produced by solar panels. They sacrifice nothing in reliability or overall service and have the ability to claim themselves as a 100% green powered web hosting company.
As web hosting companies start doing their part to reduce their carbon footprint and more ways to help them implement change are put into place, you can be assured of finding more and more choices when it comes to green web hosting. Hopefully the end result will be every hosting company out there being able to proclaim themselves as a truly green web hosting company and in turn save our environment from further damage.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:35 pm
not quite understand everything, maybe it was a test account?
September 27th, 2009 at 12:59 am
I work at a hosting company that has recently started getting power from wind energy nearby. Very interesting article.
Another thing we’ve done is switched all our paperwork fonts to Ecofont, which claims to use 10% less ink.
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:16 am
It’s an amazing experience to have read your blogs. I look forward to reading again your
articles. Thanks for your post.