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What is Green Web Hosting?

If you've recently been searching for a hosting provider, you've probably noticed that quite a few of them are touting that they offer green web hosting. The description of their service does sound intriguing, but exactly what is it all about and what are its benefits? For those curious about green web hosting, this article gives you the information that you need to know about this new type of hosting service and the benefits they offer.

First, here is some background on web hosting. Hosting is provided by companies that house and operate many web-oriented servers. These severs are housed in large rooms. Since servers generate a lot of heat, these rooms must be kept cool. If they are not, the servers could malfunction, which could cause them to lose all of their data.

To perform all of these functions, the setup requires lots of power. In fact web hosting and data centers constitutes one of the highest forms of energy consumptions in the world. Add to this fact that since the internet is expected to continue its high rate of growth, hosting companies that contain the websites that we frequent will require more and more energy to service this growth.

Enter Green Web Hosting

Accommodating the hosting company's need for energy makes their energy bill one of their highest expenditures. Collectively, hosting companies could save millions of dollars by cutting down on this one expenditure. To make this happen, many hosting providers are augmenting there energy requirements with renewable energy sources. Hosting companies making these changes are said to be going green, hence the name, green web hosting.

The renewable energy options for many of these green web hosting companies have been wind and solar. Solar and wind technologies have the highest deployment among renewable energy sources. This has to do with the maturity of the technologies and the growing interest in many commercial, governmental and local sectors to also reduce energy cost.

Furthermore, saving on energy cost is not the only benefit of going green. Given their power consumption, collectively, hosting companies produce millions of tons of CO2 a year. The production of CO2 is believed to be the underlying reason for global warming. By using renewable energy sources, green web hosting companies are reducing their carbon footprint and helping to save the planet.

Another way that green web hosting companies are going green is by buying renewable energy credits (RECs). RECs are a type of energy commodity. Purchasing RECs helps to fund renewable energy projects such as wind farms, thereby reducing our need on fossil fuels.

However, being conscientious about energy usage for green web hosting providers does not stop with just installing renewable energy sources or purchasing RECs. The hardware used in their servers requires a certain amount of power for them to work. These components constitute a large percentage of hosting companies power usage. By investing in hardware that generates low power consumption, these companies are further reducing their energy consumption.

Some of these hardware choices pertain to replacing older server hardware with servers that have processors that have been specifically manufactured to generate less energy while still maintaining performance. Some green web hosting companies are also switching to solid-state hard drives. These drives are based on flash memory technology, which use less energy than their disk-base drive counterparts.

Another growing trend that green web hosting companies are using to save energy is adopting virtual hosting. Virtual hosting allows providers to run multiple servers on one machine. This allows these companies to purchase fewer servers, thus producing less energy in the process.

Not Just Good for the Environment

Going green is not just good for the environment. It is also a beneficial marketing strategy for green web hosting companies. Many of these companies are now not only touting their quality of service, but they are also letting customers know that they are environmentally friendly.

With internet growth rising, more and more hosting companies are starting to open up. This means more competition for all of the companies in this business sector. Going green is another way to get the message out to potential customers that they are modern and efficient, which in the end will hopefully drive customers their way. In fact there are websites that rank green web hosting companies who are 100% environmentally friendly. Given the competitive nature of this business, companies saying that they are green have an added selling point over their competition that are not using renewable energy sources.

So if you are looking for a hosting company and going green is a selling point for you, just look for the companies that say they offer green web hosting. Both you and the hosting company will benefit from your choice.

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