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As you may have seen, our recent switch to a green web hosting provider led to a series of 4 posts on everything we went through to select the right sustainable host for our green website. First we learned that green web hosts can generally be divided into two main types: those who generate green energy, and those who purchase credits for production of future green energy to offset their current usage of whatever energy is available to them. Then we compared the price and features of all web hosting plans for 16 green web hosts. We also found that eight of these 16 have affiliate programs with various incentives and benefits for marketing their sustainable hosting plans. Finally, we told you which hosting provider we selected and why we chose them.
Since our goal is to run our business in a sustainable manner and help support other individuals and businesses who aim to lighten their footprint on the planet, we didn't stop there. Even after we had purchased two years of green web hosting with HostPapa, we continued to research, read blog entries and get into some interesting discussions with others in the blogosphere.
We have found that there may be some serious reasons to be concerned about the global carbon trading market upon which green energy credits are based. We also discovered that most web hosting providers (green or not) do not physically own or maintain their own servers, but rent them from large datacenters, which are (according to Elizabeth at Technical Confusion) mostly NOT green, unless they've built it themselves from the ground up or rent their server space from AISO.net, the largest (perhaps only) green datacenter, and the one most of the solar-powered web hosting services use, unless they maintain their own small datacenter. Therefore, if the green host's website claims to offset their own personal energy use, this may or not include their space at the datacenter where the sites are actually physically hosted.
So, we have found that our research, though it felt extensive--almost overwhelming at times--was nearly the entrance to a very long fall down the Rabbit Hole. We are continuing to learn more and will keep posting as we learn new information. Thanks to information and tools provided by Elizabeth, we will eventually identify the datacenter locations and status of each of the green web hosting providers on our list. This may take quite awhile to do, considering it happens in my "spare time" while I am still working full-time. The goal is definitely to have completed this by the time our 2-year hosting plan expires so we can make sure we do have a truly green web hosting provider.
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Great research. We are a green web hosting company and when we when green we had to do some of the same research. We found that there is only one truly green datacenter. in the US AISO So we put our server there. Check us out at https://www.graymatterhost.com
Using this Data Center allowed us to compete in the world and give great service for a great price.
As I read this you either ARE or ARE not Green. Piggybacking green or offsetting blah blah blah, does not seem to really be GREEN, as the piggyback "green" agent can never be aware of the realtime carbon crunching of the "traditional" host. Seems to me that if there is only one, AISO, still at this reading, you break the contract for the piggy-back host and go GREEN.
Hello there! How is everyone doing?
I am a friend of 7Gens and right now I am having a hard time to sign in to blogger and don't have time to look for my password. So I am going to comment as an Anonymous.
As I know the host is not 100% green, but the reason is these guys don't have enough money to go for a 100% green hosting. As you probably know that 100% green hosting services are a bit pricey. At least the current hosting (they are using) is if not 100% but a little greener than any other non-green hosting. That's why they are trying to earn some money so they can eventually, even move to a 100% hosting company as soon as possible.
The current hosting company was the best choice at this time.
This is just my own opinion.
Thank you! :)
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