The Green Savings Network

Green Web Hosting

Posted on 14. May, 2010 by Alex Vidal in Blog

Did you know web hosting is estimated to be as polluting as the airline industry in year 2020? Me neither. Amenworld’s Olivier Djidjelli said, “Like other industries, the hosting industry has a role in the global effort to reduce levels of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere”.

Very few people realize the true impact the web hosting industry has on the environment. The average server produces the same emissions as a 15 mpg SUV, let alone the data center where the server is located, which consumes on average as much electricity as 30,000 households. The average website is hosted on a server which produces around 12 1/2 Tons of CO2 each year. That is a huge amount of CO2! Each year your PC produces half a ton, your car produces 5 Tons, and your home produces 6 1/2 Tons. This means on average each person is responsible for 12 Tons of the CO2 that is produced each year. About the same as each web server. SO how many web servers are out there? Well I don’t know the exact number, but for starters, some have said that Google alone has upwards in the range of 500,000 servers over at least 25 locations around the world.

Fortunately, many web hosting companies have started to offer their clients green hosting options. So what have we done? Well, the Green Savings Company doesn’t have wind turbines or wave power generators, but we have decided to go green by choosing to have GreenSavingsCo.com and GreenSavingsNetwork.com hosted on green servers by a company with green values. While energy efficient servers only produce 20% less CO2 than the average server, green web hosts have a number of options including using natural energy sources, generating their own renewable energy, using energy efficient hardware, operating an eco-friendly office, purchasing energy credits to offset their use of dirty power, or even planting a tree for every new client (website). All of these things aim to neutralize the web’s affects on the environment.

As our social lives, personal lives, and business lives move to the internet, the metaphor of cloud computing is being given all new meaning. If the future is ‘in the clouds’, please choose green clouds over black ones. To learn more about green web hosting, feel free to email us. Thanks for reading.

Tags: green certified, green hosting, green web, green web hosting