A look at green hosting
One of the effective ways to associate you with environmentally sustainable initiatives in your business or company is to begin green hosting. It can even be a very powerful marketing tool and can be an example to other businesses which have a heavy demand of electricity. There is a growing increase of these hosting companies because of the fact that there is a growing public awareness of the use of electricity and its impact on the environment. Apart from this the government has also done well by requiring companies to comply with green technologies.
What Is Green Web Hosting?
Green web hosting is a greener, more environmentally friendly way to host websites. Most green web hosting companies aim to provide high-quality services while doing everything they can to limit their carbon emission.
A common approach is to produce an equivalent or a greater amount of energy than what is being consumed and return that energy to the grid. A company can generate energy using renewable power technologies like solar and wind. Those technologies are prime examples of green energy production and two of the most environmentally friendly methods of generating electricity.
Green Web Hosting Certification Types
There are many levels of green certification from different certification bodies. Still, the two main types of certifications related to green web hosting are Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) and Carbon Offset Certificates (VER).
Renewable Energy Certificates (REC): These are commonly known as Green tags, although you might also see them referred to as Renewable Electricity Certificates or Tradable Renewable Certificates.
In the US, these certificates prove that a full 1 megawatt-hour of electricity has been generated from a renewable energy source and fed back into the electricity grid. This ensures that the power used by a web hosting facility has been replaced by a renewable electricity provider.
Carbon Offset Certificate (VER): Think of carbon offset as a way to make up for carbon created due to energy generation and consumption. For web hosting companies with large installations inside data centers, it makes sense to get certified with carbon offsets. It’s an effective way to ensure that their energy usage complies with the rules of the country where they operate.
Recycling is another good way to get a carbon offset certificate, and it can help reduce an organization’s carbon footprint.
It is important to note that there are however some green hosting companies and websites that do not have any basis in actual usage or consumption. As such there are some radically differing statistics on some of these ecology conscious websites and companies on the internet. It is also worthy of note that this is a disservice to the community which is environmentally responsible and the consumer. This is especially the case when the data is readily available. You should therefore be very careful as to the kind of companies that you choose on the internet for your needs.
Moreover, depending on the figures and where they come from, most of them are not credited or cited and we observe that the green hosting companies spend like 3 billion dollars on the consumption of electricity. There is no doubt that this is very high for the companies to bear. With figures from the latest Department of Energy report, it shows that the average cost per kilowatt hour nationwide is 9.8 cents per KWH. Taking all this into consideration additional information shows that the United States alone generated about 1.5 trillion KWH of electricity in the year which is a year to date total.
Numerically, it has been shown that the green hosting companies also accounted for about 4% of the total electrical power consumption in the country. Indeed some even observe that this figure is actually about two-tenths of one percent. But it is important to derive from all this the point that the hosting company and the ISP in the United States can be powered by about one thirds of the yearly production of nuclear reactors in the country.
Furthermore, you would also have to note that the nature of the green hosting business runs in such a way that the company must be in operation for twenty four hours a day, seven days a week throughout the year. However, this can never be guaranteed by even a pure green solution. It must thus have a connection with the main power grid so that it can provide complete green power even in times of insufficient power. This why a lot of the green hosting companies take this into consideration and therefore take the necessary steps to help conserve energy. This they normally do by selling their excess back to the power company during the peak generation intervals. The demand is also very high during this period.
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