What is Green Hosting and Why is It Important?

Green hosting is important for a simple, if surprising reason: the internet is the fastest growing carbon polluting industry on the planet. Today, it produces levels of carbon emissions comparable to those of the aviation industry. The difference is that while planes are becoming more fuel efficient, the internet is being bogged down in data. As more of the world goes online, and more websites are built, more hardware is required to support it.

In today’s post, we’re going to delve into the topic of green web hosting. What does it mean, why does it matter – and what’s in it for you?

What is green hosting?

‘Green’ hosting is website hosting that’s better for the environment. More eco-friendly, more sustainable and with a lower impact than conventional hosting, it aims to reduce the pressure the internet puts on our planet – pressure that’s huge, and rising fast.

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.

What if a company doesn’t want to invest in a solar grid or wind farm?

A green web hosting company doesn’t have to generate their own power to feed back into the system. They can pass that responsibility to a certified green energy supplier.

Companies can purchase Green tags from certified green energy suppliers to sell them. For each Green tag purchased, the certified green energy supplier will add a prescribed amount of energy to the grid on behalf of the web hosting company that purchased the tag.

This makes sense because the cost to produce any type of electricity is high. Renewable energy, while gradually becoming more affordable, is still quite an expensive technology when scaled to meet the power needs of a data center.

Using a green energy provider is a good way for web hosting companies to offset their energy consumption without generating the power themselves.

Another way a company can be accountable for its energy usage involves recycling initiatives that give the company carbon credits. These credits allow businesses to cancel out the carbon they have contributed to the global system.

You’ll often find green hosting offered by providers who go out of their way to adopt more sustainable practices. Of course, the moniker of ‘green hosting’ can apply to a few different strategies for improving the environmental impact of web hosting.

These can include:

• Renewable energy credits: Some web hosting companies buy renewable energy credits (RECs). These certificates demonstrate that some portion of the supply from their energy company has been generated from green sources. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the hosting provider is using green energy themselves.
• Sustainable power sources: This strategy involves generating renewable energy and using it directly to power operations. For example, this may include running servers on solar or wind power.
• Carbon offset certificates: Sometimes known as Verified Emission Reductions (VERs), these certificates qualify that an equivalent amount of carbon emissions to those generated by the hosting company have been reduced somewhere else.
• Energy efficient equipment: Technology is improving all the time, meaning that in many cases, older server hardware is going to be less efficient and less powerful. In real terms, this can mean both greater energy requirements per server, and a need for more servers to handle the work of a few modern ones. Ongoing optimisation can be an important factor in making sure energy usage and carbon emissions are kept in check.
• Green culture: Some hosting providers also make eco-awareness part of their working culture, encouraging staff to cycle or use public transport to get to work, or promoting recycling schemes at the office.

When searching for a green hosting provider, it can be worth taking the time to find out what exactly they mean by their definition of ‘green’ to check that it aligns with your goals. At least one thing is for sure: with the unfolding climate crisis now impossible to ignore, many of us are looking for ways to make more sustainable, responsible choices – and green hosting is a step in the right direction.

Internet’s CO2 Impact on the Environment

The internet has made our lives so much faster, automated, connected, and convenient. We can only associate good things with it, right? Most of us don’t realize it, but the internet – in its full glory and mission to connect the world and store and share information – leaves a huge CO2 footprint on the environment.

Unaware to many of us, the internet’s functioning has a massive environmental impact. So massive that it equals the gas emissions of the entire aviation industry! Unbelievable as it may sound, harmless words like wireless data and cloud are harming our planet and depleting our natural resources in more ways than one. 

The wireless data we use each second to do harmless activities like listening to music, chatting, sending emails, and storing data rely on data centers and networks to relay information between devices across the globe. These data centers consume a significant amount of electricity to send and store this data between devices and servers. 

This is where green web hosting comes in. Responsible web hosts use the green, environmentally friendly approach to power websites and maintain servers and domain names. For their functioning, they only use renewable green energy, giving back to the environment and making responsible contributions to sustainable practices. 

Why is traditional hosting so bad for the planet?

We live in an increasingly eco-conscious world, and our society is starting to reject well-known environmental hazards such as single-use plastics on a mass scale. For many, the digital realm is seen as the solution to the problems of unnecessary physical waste. However, it’s not always intuitively obvious that internet services have their own environmental consequences, with issues such as high power consumption and carbon emissions meaning that there can be a steep cost to the planet.

While most of us know that the aviation industry is responsible for a huge quantity of carbon emissions (2.5% of the global total), it’s a little-known yet important fact that the internet and its supporting systems produce even more (3.7%).

At present, the world has over 75 million servers which together contribute to 2% of all greenhouse emissions.

It follows that it should be a major priority for us to power the web with renewable energy. In fact, the internet by itself currently produces more carbon annually than the combined output of Hong Kong, Singapore, The Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Mongolia. On an individual level, every time a user accesses a web page, around 20 milligrams of CO2 are emitted on average – and that’s just for a normal website. If it’s a large site with video content, we could be talking about as much as 300 milligrams of emissions per second.

While many have advocated for the general public to change their flying habits, or to eschew disposable packaging, it’s not really a practical solution to ask everyone to ‘use the internet less’. For the majority of us, the web is an intrinsic part of our social and working cultures. Expecting people to individually reduce their internet use would be tantamount to asking them to remove themselves from normal modern life.

It’s clear that if real change is going to happen, it needs to be led by hosting providers. After all, a big part of the problem is that web hosting is so energy intensive. Sites are stored on servers in data centres, and they’re not small-scale operations. Data centres can have tens of thousands of cabinets, filled with networking devices, servers and backup infrastructure. Thanks to the ‘always on’ nature of the internet, all of this is running round the clock, requiring a massive amount of energy.

In 2020, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published a report stating that as much as 1% of the entire planet’s annual electricity usage is spent keeping massive data centres running around the world.

On top of this, the coronavirus pandemic had caused a major surge in global web traffic, due to an increased need for video conferencing and remote working. To make matters worse, all of the servers in a big data centre generate a huge amount of heat, requiring cooling systems to keep temperatures down and the tech in good working order. It’s a colossal undertaking. In fact, it’s estimated that 40% of all the energy it takes to power the internet goes into stopping servers from overheating.

There’s no getting away from how much energy data centres need, but the real question is how that power is sourced. By switching to green hosting, you can make sure that this energy comes from renewable sources, or at least has a gentler impact on the planet. Of course, all of the above relates only to how much energy we’re using for the web right now. As we look to make small changes to sustainability, it’s important to acknowledge that the internet (and our global usage of it) continues to grow.

With worldwide internet traffic increasing 15-fold year-on-year, it’s clear that provisions must be made to keep the energy requirements of online services in check, and to limit the environmental harm that can be done.

What Are the Advantages of Green Web Hosting?

Green web hosting provides multiple benefits to your business and the environment. Let’s explore three main advantages of a green hosting plan.

Harmless to the Environment

The major advantage of green web hosting is that it’s completely harmless and damage-free to our planet. It is a safe and sustainable way to power websites and share data and a great way to contribute towards reducing your carbon footprint on the environment. 

Whether you’re helping the environment by reducing the web host’s carbon footprint or contributing power back into the grid, green web hosting means interacting more positively with the environment.

Less Expensive Than Conventional Hosting

Green web hosting is not just eco-friendly but also cost-effective. It’s a cheaper option for running your servers than regular hosting. Standard web hosting consumes much electricity, making its service and package costs pricier. 

Meanwhile, green hosting is powered by a renewable sources of energy like solar and wind, which slashes its running costs. This results in reduced and cheaper hosting package costs for the client. 

But don’t assume you’ll get a compromised set of options if you choose a green hosting plan. By choosing to go green, you’ll get an equally well-rounded and fully optimized web hosting package as any other conventional plan, which includes all types of hosting plans, including WordPress hosting. You’ll also get site security, backups, domain name, email, and more. 

Green web hosting offers dedicated servers and shared servers. So you get a complete range of options, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, and Managed WordPress Hosting. 

Great for Your Business Profile

Opting for an eco hosting provider is fantastic for your company’s reputation and profile. By endorsing green web hosting for your domain name, you’re endorsing sustainable living and working practices, which adds brownie points to your profile. It creates a great impression in the professional market and on your clients. It indicates that you’re part of the global community of conscious change-makers who want to protect their environment. 

What are the benefits of green hosting for my agency?

In light of all the benefits of green hosting, it’s not hard to see why it’s gaining so much traction. First, and most obviously, it’s your chance to do something about climate change – to make a positive, proactive choice to reduce your carbon footprint, switch to renewables, and take better care of the environment.

Once you’ve done that, even more benefits kick in. All over the world, people are placing more importance on environmental issues, so being able to say you use green hosting can really boost your reputation. It shows you’re a thoughtful, responsible business – and gives potential customers a new reason to choose you. It also gives those customers a new story to tell their own clients, friends and networks. Your reputation is reciprocal, and the way it reflects on others can drive even more recommendations and referrals.

Finally, choosing a green hosting provider gives you a strong story to tell in your marketing. From your website to your social feeds, green hosting can show your target audience what is important to you, and attract customers who feel the same way. In fact, being greener than your competitors can in many cases work as a compelling unique selling point (USP). Customers today are more environmentally aware than ever before, and being able to tell them that their projects are hosted in an environmentally responsible fashion might just be the key differentiator that makes them choose you.

While the ecological impact of web hosting may be a less popular talking point than throwaway plastics or the aviation industry, public awareness of other environmental issues is growing by the day – and demand for green hosting will only increase over the coming months and years. More and more customers will want to work with service providers who can be thoughtful about their ecological impact. Green hosting is an easy and tangible way to demonstrate your green credentials, and adopting it now will put you ahead of the curve.

How to Check if You’re Using a Green Web Hosting Provider

Web hosting companies that provide green shared hosting plans declare it proudly and loudly. Investing in a green hosting setup is a big cash investment for web hosts and makes them a part of a responsible environmental protection movement. 

Your hosting provider will proudly display their green hosting certificates or talk about their green practices on their profiles. Either way, you’ll know easily if you’re on a green shared hosting plan.

Get On Board with Green Web Hosting

Green web hosting can benefit your business or personal website.

Not only will you be satisfied knowing that you’re helping the environment, but your visitors will also know! You can proudly display your website’s green status and show people you care about the planet. Maybe you’ll even convince a few people to go green themselves.

By getting the word out to the rest of the world, you can help encourage a green revolution in which we all focus more on efficient energy usage and environmentally friendly living.

If everybody does their part, we can make a big difference.

Green web hosting: Frequently asked questions

What is a green web hosting provider?

A green web hosting provider offers web hosting packages while trying to minimize the environmental impact of its operations. They often use renewable energy sources and promote sustainability projects to minimize their carbon footprint.

What is a green website?

A green website is identical to a traditional website, except it uses a green web hosting server. So, any website that’s hosted by a provider that follows green web hosting practices could be considered a green website.

What are the benefits of green hosting?

Green web hosting minimizes the environmental impact of web hosting and allows you to create a sustainable business.

How do I choose a green web hosting company?

Most green web hosting companies proudly display their green status on their websites. The best way to find the right one for you is to shortlist a few web hosting companies and check if they support green hosting. In addition, you may use green hosting directories.

How do I know if a website is green-hosted?

You may verify the green status of a website through online tools like Green Web Check. Just input the website URL to check if it’s hosted on a green server.  For example, SirsteveHQ is a green website.

At SirsteveHQ, we offer 100% green hosting, all powered by renewables. All our web hosting runs on 100% renewable power. With our green hosting, you can be assured that your websites are stored on servers that avoid contributing to climate change. Sites hosted on SirsteveHQ will pass the Green Web Foundation‘s sustainability checks.