When you are browsing around on the Internet, reading your emails, watching online videos, chatting with friends and co-workers etc you probably don’t think about the many and massive data centers that are needed to run all those things.

Just in USA alone these data centers used enough energy to power nearly 6 million homes during 2005. And the energy usage is expected to double by year 2011.

New Hampshire Public Radio’s Amy Quinton takes a closer look on what is being done to make these “SUV’s of the tech world” more energy efficient and green, something that might not be as easy as you think.

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Green WebHost is an UK company that started providing environmental guided hosting in 2003. They were, according to them, the first ISP in UK that took this issue seriously.

Their datacenter is located in California, east of Los Angeles, and uses 120 solar panels which generate all the electricity they need to power the servers and their offices, becoming the first and only solar-powered hosting company in the UK.

We “assist” in the offset all of our estimated 25 Tonnes per year of CO2 (by “sequestration” or “Carbon Fix”) by working with TreeSponsibility, a community based Climate Action Group, we also plant a tree for every new Broadband and Web Hosting customer.

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Two new green web hosts has been added to our growing green web host list.

The first one is Host Papa, a web host located in Canada who purchases Green Certificates (Green Tags or RECs).

The second one is Lightbeing Creations. Lightbeing Creations is a green reseller host. They buy server space from the 100% solar powered hosting company Aiso.

Aiso are one of the few that truly offers green web hosting. Live Earth choosed to host their site with them. Asio is also a member of the U.S. Green Building Council and was featured in Inc. Magazines’ Top 50 Green Companies. If you want you can learn more about Aiso here.

That has been the question of the past week and here are the results:

• Yes! (44%)
• No, but I will soon. (33%)
• I am not sure? (22%)
• No! (0%)

Surprisingly a rather large part of our visitors (voters) are already hosted on a green web host. That makes us happy. But what makes us happier is that 33% will soon go green. It’s good to see that things are moving and people are realising that you can green every aspect of your life.

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The German web host Strato has stated that it will be completely carbon-free in January 2008. The impressive thing is that they will go the whole way with real renewable green energy and not just purchasing green tags (RECs).

Does it sound like a mission impossible or a PR-coup to you? It’s not. Strato has already proven that they mean serious by having reduced its energy usage with 30 % per customer in the past 18 months.

In an interview with The Register the CEO of Strat, Damien Schmidt, said that “while people may be more aware of reducing their individual carbon footprint, it was also important for tech firms to “look behind the screen” and consider the sizable, carbon-munching emissions spat out by IT equipment.”

Green Blog is happy to see that more and more web host companies are taking their responsibility by going green and wish Strato the best of luck.

http://www.strato.de

Would you be interested in moving to a “green” web host? Well that has been our question for a couple of weeks now. And if you look at the final results a majority of our readers would actually be interested in moving to an environmental friendly web host.

According to you it doesn’t matter if a green web host cost a little extra. Only 9% would like to move to a green web host but can’t because “they cost too much”.

Around 30% of you haven’t yet fully understood what a “green” web host actually is. That’s okay, we understand that. That’s why we will soon dedicate a whole section of our site were we will try to explain what separates green web hosts from normal (dirty) web hosts.

Only about 4% of our visitors (or at least the ones who have voted) don’t want to move to a green web host. Are you stubborn or don’t you know what’s at stake? Please tell us why you don’t want to move to a green web host.

• Yes! (57%)
• What’s a “green” web host? (30%)
• Yes, but they cost too much. (9%)
• No! (4%)

Our new poll question is: Are you currently hosted on a “green” web host?

Last week we asked you here on the blog to take contact with a “dirty” web host and ask them what they do or what they are planning to do to help fight global warming. Thanks for all the responses, keep them coming!

Here are a few of the responses you guys and girls have sent us:

HostGator

Please wait for a HostGator operator to respond.
Welcome to HostGator Live Chat! You are now chatting with ‘Cody’
Cody: Welcome to HostGator, how may I assist you?
Josh: Hi
Josh: I am looking around for a new web host. Hostgator looks perfect but before I decide anything I would like to know what you, as a company do to help stop global warming?
Cody: One moment please.
Josh: Sure.
Cody: I really don’t know of anything we do as a company to stop global warming.
Josh: Ohhh. Thats to bad. :/
Josh: Then I guess Hostgator is not an option for me. Thank you for your time.
Cody: Well I’m sorry to hear that, we just don’t really have anything organized at this time.
Cody: But I will pass this along to our management.
Josh: That would be a good idea Cody, thanks.

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Sustainable Websites offers web hosting powered by wind power from Renewable energy certificates (RECs). The green power is generated in the Mountain View Wind facility in San Gorgonio Pass, California. With its 111 wind turbines Mountain View can generate enough energy to power over 40000 homes in California.

By purchasing renewable energy certificates, we’re not only offsetting our own emissions of harmful pollutants and greenhouse gases, we’re participating in a community of responsible businesses and individuals. The income from REC’s goes towards either supporting existing wind turbine farms or developing new ones. We’re part of the solution - imagine if more people participated too! Even if less than 50% of the population participated, we would be well on our way to independence from imported fossil fuels.

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