Greenprofs

In modern times it’s almost a given that every business needs to have a website. It is perfectly fitting for the owners of a green business to have an interest in environmental goodness and to ensure all aspects of their business are a reflection of this interest. It may not be obvious but web hosting is not automatically green because of the intense energy requirements. A web site does let a business decrease use of printed brochures and other marketing materials, but it takes considerable resources to keep that web site in operation. Web hosting involves renting service from a web hosting provider, and unless the provider takes extra steps their operation will not be ‘green’. Web hosting is a very energy intensive business involving high power electrical equipment, and rooms full of air conditioning and server computers.

Green web hosting takes a couple forms and is essentially an effort by a web hosting provider to ensure their environmental impact is offset. Web hosting data centers are large consumers of power for the computer equipment and cooling systems needed, and there is no way to avoid that large energy cost. It is quite possible to ensure the power is generated from renewable sources and that the equipment has minimal power requirements. There are two general groups of green web hosting companies. The first group buys renewable energy certificates in an effort to offset the power they use by power generated from a renewable resource. The U.S. EPA defines green power as electricity produced from solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low-impact small hydroelectric sources. The second group actually generates their own power usually from an onsite solar or wind power system.

It may seem more pure or correct for a green web hosting provider to generate their own electricity from renewable sources. But like for any business, generating their own electricity adds considerable complication. It would probably be a distraction to also operate an electricity plant, and add additional capital costs to the startup of the business. Their is an important consideration of obtaining an excellent high bandwidth connections to the Internet backbone. Typically web hosting providers ensure this by using colocation facilities that have Internet backbone connections. If a web hosting provider has their own building and onsite power generation facility, that means they cannot colocate their equipment in colocation facilities and have to make Internet backbone connections through other means.

That said there are several Green web hosting companies who do generate their own electricity from solar or wind power. It is more demonstratively clean if they do generate their own power because it is very easy to prove they’ve generated all the power required to run their business.

The greenest thing one can do perhaps is to simply not use a resource in the first place. Some of the hosting providers discuss energy efficiencies such as only buying power efficient servers, using LCD monitors versus CRT monitors, etc. In some cases hosting providers do not have a physical location and all employees telecommute, and this results in lower carbon footprint through less travel by their employees. In other words efficient use of resources results in a lower resource footprint and contributes to how green the company is.