Green Web Hosting – Interesting Facts About Data Centers
As more people become aware of the increasing need to adapt to a smaller carbon footprint in the wake of global warming, perhaps you’ve asked yourself, “What can I do to help?” Let’s find out.
More and more people are coming online and using social services like Facebook and Twitter or starting their own websites and blogs. However, free services have their limitations and if they don’t like the content you post, they can pull your online presence.
You can still effectively communicate with friends, family and others around the world and post the content you like when you have your own domain for running a website or blog, but before you jump on board and buy your first or next web hosting account, here is something to consider.
The data centers that are needed to run a web hosting company consume enormous amounts of electricity. In October 2009, US Infrastructure magazine did a study on data centers and compiled some interesting facts.
- Between 2000 and 2005, the energy consumed by large data centers doubled worldwide.
- In 2006, online data centers in the US accounted for 1.5 percent of the entire country’s electricity use.
- 25% of the power needed to operate a data center goes towards air conditioning to keep the servers from over-heating.
The good news is, more data centers are turning to green energy, mainly wind and solar, to power their operations.
A few years ago when eco-friendly web hosting was becoming popular, the pricing structure was at a premium, often more than double that of non-green hosting and with significant limitations on disk space and bandwidth.
In recent months, prices have been drastically reduced and web hosting companies like iPage and SuperGreen can now offer green hosting accounts with unlimited disk space and bandwidth for under $4/month, under pricing most of their competitors.
If you are considering purchasing hosting, take a look at carbon neutral web hosting from iPage or SuperGreen.
I have both an iPage a SuperGreen account and the speed of my websites and blogs are considerably faster than that of other hosts I’ve tried.
-AJ
