HOME >> HOSTING SOLUTIONS >> ZERO CARBON FOOTPRINT
About Zero Carbon Footprint Web Hosting Solutions
The Hidden Cost of the Internet
The scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows that Internet usage and the demand for power hungry applications is one of the fastest growing areas of energy consumption. That energy consumption today mostly comes from non-renewable sources that both deplete our natural resources, and also add greenhouse gases like CO2.
Over the last five years the increase in use of IT related data systems and the power and cooling infrastructures that support them have doubled energy use to 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity. By 2011, electrical consumption by datacenters is projected to nearly double to 100 billion kWh, costing more than $7.4 billion.
U.S. data centers contribute as much pollution annually as 4.7 million cars or 5.3 million U.S. households electricity usage . Internet computing around the globe produces the same greenhouse gases as 22 million cars .
Worldwide, powering of the Internet contributes more than 2% of the world's total carbon emissions or roughly the same as the entire aviation industry . It's widely accepted by many scientific sources that the industry is on track to double its energy consumption in the next 4 years.
In fact, internet computing power consumption and its reliance on non-renewable sources is now at a point where an second life avatar (a digital representation of one's self in the 3D virtual world at SecondLife.com) actually contributes more atmospheric pollution annually than a real citizen in Brazil . Imagine: the digital representation of you may be doing more harm to the environment than the real world you!
Less Effective Options
There are many thousands of web hosting companies today, hosting more than 125 million websites. Many are smaller hosting companies offer little differentiation and have turned the web service provider business into mostly a commodity service, relegated to compete on price and common features. There are a few "name brand" web hosts who have emerged as the leaders in the space. However, few have taken a values-based approach to building partnerships with their customers that translate their Internet strategies into a technology extension of their ethical values and commitments to their employees, their customers, and their stewardship of the planet.
Most "green" web hosts today run their data centers with traditional, utility-connected electricity and server configurations and then offset their pollution output by purchasing renewable energy credits (RECs). The cost of their renewable energy credit purchases is then built into the price of the web hosting plans they offer.
Greenest Host Solution
Greening your hosting and data center operations is a simple, low cost and effective way of saving money and saving energy. It is superior to renewable energy credit purchasing (also called carbon offsetting) and it’s incredibly easy for people and companies to do. Best of all, it’s no more expensive than non-green services. In fact, it generally saves money in the long run.
As the direct cause of more than 2% of the world’s pollution (and a problem that’s on track to double in size in just 4 years), switching data center operations from reliance of non-renewable energy to renewable energy will stop needlessly adding to the problem.
Greenest Host’s data center, network, and servers were designed from the ground up to use the lowest amount of energy possible using the latest green design techniques; including deploying all new AMD Opteron powered servers, which use sixty percent less energy and generate fifty percent less heat than other data centers’ servers.
In addition, our servers are powered by one of the most state-of-the-art data center designs and are located just 90 miles northeast of San Diego. The center is powered by 120 solar panels and year-round sun – that means the servers use 100% renewable energy 100% of the time and create zero carbon emissions in their operation.
Greenest Host was founded on the principle that, in addition to being the ethically superior choice, "going green" can also provide customers with better performance and better value. There no longer has to be a trade-off between making the right choice for the environment and having the absolute best quality of service at a market competitive price.
|
