The hosting industry is always evolving and different types of hosting services are hitting the market every other day. I am not sure if you have heard of this or not, but, you can contribute to the nature even while hosting a website. To do so, you need to use green web hosting.
What is Green Web Hosting?
A hosting service needs to power up their data centers across countries. For that, they need energy and if the hosting company uses the sustainable energy sources, it’s basically a green hosting service. Some of the most general energy sources are: natural gas, oil, coal etc., however, these green hosting providers use geothermal and wind energy instead.
What’s Behind the Concept of Green Web Hosting?
Within the last 12 years, the energy consumption related to maintaining data centers have doubled up. The overall number of internet users is increasing and so as the number of websites. With more websites, the hosting space required is also increasing, so as the energy consumption to keep them running.
Researchers have found that a simple server emits same carbon like a 15 mpg SUV and if things go like this, by 2020, web hosting data centers will become bigger polluters than the airline industry.
Well, there is another reason apart from the aforementioned two. A hosting company needs to pay a lot more when it’s using the traditional energy sources for maintaining data centers. The same comes down by a huge rate, if the provider uses alternate energy sources instead. Additionally, the hosting providers get tax reliefs for contributing to the environment. There are some initial set up costs that a hosting company needs to incur while starting out with renewable energy sources, but, once things are settled, the costs get down pretty fast.
Renewable Energy Certificates
To verify whether a hosting service is indeed using renewable energy or not; check if the same has renewable energy certificate or not. This certificate is issued by the US authorities and marks that at least 1 MWh of energy has been generated by the company through an actual renewable energy source.
Generally, web hosts with this certificate flaunt this in their official website itself, so the research process is usually cut down for you. The next time you opt for a hosting provider, make sure to go with a green web hosting provider and play your part in the fight against pollution.
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