Green Web Hosting has become a major consideration over the last couple of years, and due to the already massive and still increasing global energy demands of the IT industry, green energy web hosting is here to stay.
Most web hosting as with other business is powered by electricity generated from the traditional power stations, running on coal, oil, gas and nuclear power. With the rising prices of these fossil fuels and growing concern about the safety of the nuclear industry many businesses are looking at ways to reduce their carbon footprint, the benefits of this are two fold:
1. PR, being seen to be actively trying to cut down on your emissions will ultimately win you more customers.
2. Economic Considerations, as the cost of producing fossil fuels increases so does the cost of powering your servers, in-addition it is anticipated that the worlds server farms will by the end of 2012 be creating a bigger impact on the environment than the airline industry. This will have a knock on effect as governments penalise companies not actively trying to reduce their carbon footprints.
So how do web hosting companies go green? Well there are several different methods, some produce their own electricity, using solar panels and wind turbines mounted at their server farms, some especially in Greenland use geo thermal energy or hydroelectricity. And at the other end of the spectrum some simply buy green energy credits to offset their carbon footprint.
Other ways that hosts reduce their carbon footprint is to use newer technology such as the AMD Opteron server which generates 50% less heat and therefore requires less energy to cool them, greener web hosts are also running entirely paperless offices and billing which reduces deforestation.
Which ever way you look at it green web hosting is here to stay and should be a factor in your next choice of web host.
Source: ArticlesFactory.com
Green Web Hosting
