What Is Green Hosting?

Green hosting comes in a variety of flavors, and depending on how green you want to go, you’ll need to know the difference between them. Don’t be mislead into thinking just because somebody offers green hosting that they have built their data center in the middle of nowhere under a bunch of wind mills or line the walls, ceilings, and roofs of their buildings with solar power.

Many green hosting alternatives still use traditional infrastructure like data centers, power lines, and regular servers. Instead of paying just the regular bills every month and calling the difference their profit, they are buying carbon credits that go towards alternative energy sources. So, while your particular server is not running on good clean power, you’re contributing to the overall betterment of the environment. This practice is often referred to as being “carbon neutral”.

Many companies have actually invested significant amounts of money in solar panels, and do run their data centers off of solar power. Of course, they still have grid back ups in case it’s a cloudy day or there is a problem with the panels. These sites will run entirely on solar energy, and if they produce more than they use, will actually sell it back to the grid in place of power that would be generated in a less earth friendly way.

What Are Some Way Hosts “Go Green”?

1) Resource Management – Most of the websites on the internet are not going to need the same computing power as the top few are. If a server is going unused, it’s wasting power because it could be processing more websites. One of the ways that hosting companies are over coming this classic problem is through virtualizing. Virtualizing, or meta computers, are a computer within a computer. The technology has gotten so good, and the power needed to serve your average website is so small, that you can fit 8 or 16 instances of a virtual computer on one classic computer. Because each instance, or virtual server is better utilized, less energy is wasted.

2) Better Servers – As technology has gotten faster and cheaper, it has also gotten more power efficient. Now there are technologies that will step down the amount of power a computer uses when it’s not very busy. These power saving modes leave the computer ready to rock and roll if and when it needs more power. Also, since technology is getting better, we’re getting a higher amount of processing power per watt of energy. More processing power per watt means less computers and less waste.

3) Data Center Design – Previously, data centers were built to fit the mission. They needed to house lots of computers, and were built to do just that. Extensive cooling systems, and innefficient power wiring often plagued these setups. Today, many data centers are built in areas where they can be cheaply cooled from the outside, run on inexpensive nuclear or earth friendly power, and are designed with the efficiency of thousands of computers in mind. Even a fractional percentage increase in efficiency can have drastic effects on carbon output over the course of a year.

Is Green Hosting For You?

If you want to help the environment and do everything in your possible to reduce your carbon footprint, Green Hosting your WordPress installation is your key. Also, if you’re selling a product or service that you’d like to bill as earth friendly, imagine being able to tout that even your website is carbon neutral, and you’re doing everything you can to help the planet. This is a powerful sales tactic and can increase conversions on your website amongst socially and environmentally responsible consumers.

Whether it’s solar powered web hosting, carbon offset hosting, or wind powered web hosting, Green hosting is a great way to demonstrate your commitment to the planet at a really fundamental level.

Check out some of our favorite Green Hosts!