With the huge amounts of energy that data centers use, switching to “green hosting” is something that hosting companies are doing to save costs, but also because more and more customers are asking whether their hosting is carbon neutral

But what exactly does green website hosting mean?  And is it a sham?

There are basically two types of ways hosting can be more sustainable.  The electricity use  to power the servers is provided by several types of fuel, not all of them carbon based, depending on location in the country.  In some areas of the US, electricity is primarily coal-powered.  In others, electricity is mainly nuclear.

When it comes to green hosting, some providers will tell you they are “green” because they are buying carbon credits.  This means they are not using renewal energy to power their servers, but rather are buying offset credits in some market or other to generate enough renewable energy elsewhere to “offset” the carbon their power emits.

Other hosts are using renewable energy to power their servers. They are usually buying green power from their local power company, which is sometimes hydro, sometimes wind, sometimes solar, or other mix.   This doesn’t always mean the host themselves receive clean power directly, but rather that an amount of renewable energy flows into the local grid equal to the amount of power used by the host.

Some people feel that buying offsets is not really “green” because the power used in the first place is still emitting CO2.  In addition,  unlike buying renewable energy from a power company, with offsets it is far more difficult to prove an actual 1-to-1 matching reduction in CO2 somewhere else.

Still, no matter what type of green website hosting is offered, it’s good to see hosting companies on the path of reducing their potentially very heavy CO2 footprint due to powering servers.

For green website hosting, we recommend Host Gator, one of the best all around website hosting companies, as well as Dreamhost.