In the last 3 years, the Web hosting business had a dramatic change in it's awareness of bringing green practices to the industry. Now to choose the correct green hosting package and the most suitable green hosting company is next on the list. Today there are a handful of 'green hosting' companies that use carbon offsetting or claim to use environmentally friendly methods. There are also a small number who offer Carbon Free, zero emmission green hosting of which Green Leaf Hosting is proudly one of that select group. Data centres are large consumers of power for the computer equipment and cooling systems needed and currently stand on equal par to the aviation industry.
Green web hosting is becoming familiar to more and more green conscious companies, with a multitude of companies proudly taking on the description and promoting clean renewable methods of powering their data centers now a days. The fact is that many technology consumers are concerned about the human potential to degrade the environment and the sense that our hundreds of millions of cars and computers are not helping the planet. Rising temperatures may or may not be related to global warming, but the notion that humans, in general, have had a negative affect on the environment has begun to be absorbed by the web hosting industry.
Green Web Hosting is responsible for lowering our carbon CO2 footprint and uses renewable energy. Trees are desperately needed in many countries to restore soil fertility, help in the battle against global warming and improve the lives of impoverished communities. Powering of a business through solar power or wind energy can be possible by purchasing green certificates (90% wind/10% solar), the electricity generated by these sources isn't routed directly into their various premises. For every kilowatt worth of green energy purchased, a kilowatt less is fed into the grid via non-renewable means. The solar/wind generated electricity they purchased simply goes into the grid, in their case. Still, the result is the same - carbon neutral web hosting.
7. IT Power Usage – Find out how much energy you are using by checking your bill. If you don’t pay your electrical bill, as many businesses do not directly, find your facilities manager and take a look at it. Once you’ve taken some steps to reduce your power use, have another look at the bill again. Simply, seeing the impacts of your efforts will help you maintain your momentum toward reducing power use. Not only that, but you have some solid numbers to show your boss at your next performance review.
6. Utilising New Technology – As you continue to turn your IT department, consider where you can implement green ideas and technologies. Green hosting, either Carbon Free or Caron Neutral green hosting is a fantastic and cost effective way to turn your website green and reduce your Carbon footprint. You may not need to replace clients or servers now, but think about what you need and when the day does come to buy replacements, plan to buy the replacements that use less energy than what you have now.
5. Computer System Settings -- The quickest, easiest change you can make won’t cost you a thing. Simply set your clients’ power saving settings to turn off their monitors and computers after a certain time. Better yet, teach your workers that those power buttons on the front of their monitors can be pressed anytime. If they’re not using the computer, simply turn off the monitor.
4. Datacentre Check – Make sure your data centre is organized as logically as possible. Make sure you have racks of equipment set up with the cool aisle/hot aisle model. This ensures that racks of equipment aren’t using the exhaust from the rack in front of it for cooling. Also, if you have it in you, make sure the cables underneath the floor are laid out in a neat manner. This ensures that air can flow under the equipment and provides some measure of cooling you don’t have to pay for.
3. General Recycling – Recycling stretches further than just reusing paper or using the recycling bin. When you get rid of old or damaged equipment, make sure that you send it to a reputable recycler - don't just dump it outside with the rubbish! Before recycling externally, check if you can use your old equipment within the office. If it can still be used in your organisation, do it. That is, maybe you have an old printer you’re replacing, but if there is a function the printer can perform – even if it isn’t what you initially intended it for – use it there. You save yourself the money of buying new equipment and self-cycling cuts out the recycling issue.
2. Paperless office – You can save plenty of cash each year by turning your office paperless. This means storing your information online. There are very secure sites and servers that can accommodate sensitive information. It is estimated that the average document is copied nine to 11 times at a cost of about £18. To file a document, it cost £17. Even worse, the cost to retrieve a misfiled document is £104. Also, if you maintain all your files online, you can retrieve them from anywhere.
1. Thin clients – If you consider thin clients, you may only need to update the physical memory on old clients and they will be perfect to use in a new server/thin client plan. This allows you to re-purpose old clients. You don’t need to worry about recycling the old machines and it fits into our #1 green IT tip:
Green IT is vital now more than ever. With most of the Carbon emissions from businesses coming from IT, it needs to be top of every company's list. You may not care about baby seals or deforestation or any environmental issues. That's a personal prerogative but you can’t deny that cheaper power bills will help you in the long run. To go green you don’t have to jump in with both feet, just make some easy changes and start greening your office today.
In 2008 research released by Morse, revealed that 89% of UK businesses are oblivious to how much power their IT department uses. This lack of knowledge can be attributed to a number of factors. Either the company is too large and the ability to calculated the power usage of the IT department is unclear or that such a figure has never been nescessary or imporantent enough. Primarily, electricity costs have traditionally been paid for by external or central facilities or operations group, rather than individual departments or business areas within an organisation. The research found that only 12% of businesses charge their IT department for the power it uses. In addition, 62% of organisations said that green IT was not a top priority for them. This is the figure that quite simply must change. Green services and cleaning up IT departments needs to be prioritised.
“The research clearly shows that green IT is not a priority for organisations at the moment. Even if it was, without knowing the energy usage of IT, they would struggle to understand how they can make changes to become more environmentally friendly,” said Tim Turquand, consultant, Morse. “However, when you consider that Gartner estimates that 2% of global CO2 emissions are caused by ICT, and that this is comparable to the emissions of the aviation industry, it suddenly becomes clear why organisations need to start thinking about the impact that their IT is having.”
The study also showed that 76% of organisations have not set targets for reducing the amount of energy that IT consumes. However, 63% of respondents said that they have an organisation-wide policy on becoming more environmentally friendly. Considering that IT is a significant contributor to the CO2 emissions of most organisations, but the majority have not set targets for reductions, it is clear that the connection between IT and harm to the environment has not been made, or is being ignored by many organisations.
“It’s no wonder that only 24% of organisations are working towards a set energy reduction target,” said Turquand. “Without a way to measure how much power the IT department is consuming, businesses trying to reduce their energy usage can’t set a definite reduction target, and without a target, there is no way to tell if the steps you are taking actually work. Setting targets, measuring against them and then billing each department for their energy consumption is crucial because it increases accountability, giving departments the incentive to become more energy efficient. Clearly, these must be the first steps of any organisation that wants to reduce its carbon footprint.”
The definition: Green web hosting or Eco-friendly website hosting is anaddition to the arena of website hosting which involves a given green website hosting company showing that they are not having any negative impact on the environment in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. The two main options for green web hosting are Carbon Neutral and Carbon Free web hosting. The difference is that Carbon Neutral uses a Carbon offsetting system to balance the carbon emissions used to provide the green web hosting while Carbon Free web hosting uses leaves no carbon footprint at all.
The figures: World Internet usage statistics showed figures that the Internet is growing from 400 to 1000% every year, worldwide. The raw fact is that the total electricity bill to operate and run servers and related infrastructure equipment was £5.8 billion worldwide*. In 2007, Internet organisation, WebHostingCompare.org predicted that by 2020 the hosting industry would be on a par with the aviation industry in terms of carbon emissions. Other sources beleive we are a lot closer to that comparison already. Datacentremanagement.com believes data centres contribute the largest single proportion of energy use and carbon emissions from the IT sector. Data centres account for a quarter of IT-related carbon emissions, which in turn make up 2% of the world’s total carbon emissions. With so much demand on resources, eco-friendly or green web hosting services has emerged as a necessity.
*Article: Data Center Energy Consumption Has Doubled Since 2000, dated 2.15.07
Data Centre's account for over 25% of global ICT CO2 emissions
Written by Green Leaf
Data centres that require energy to run servers and provide cooling account for almost a quarter of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from information and communications technology (ICT), according to Gartner.
Not enough attention has been paid to reducing the data centre’s carbon emissions and it's the fastest growing area within the IT industry. With more and more websites going live every day, the rise in hosting needs is ever increasing. Organisations should aim to keep their data centre CO2 emissions constant but this is easier said than done. This all illustrates the need for green hosting, carbon free and carbon neutral services to help reduce your carbon emissions.
Data centres account for such a large portion of ICT CO2 emissions for a number of reasons. There is a lack of floor-space, a failure to house high-density servers and increased power consumption and heat generation. In addition, the cooling systems are adding to the problem.
Most organisations have grown their infrastructure (servers, storage and networks) considerably during the past three years. While the volume growth of these machines is set to rise annually for the next five years, a general lack of new data centre builds during the past nine years means that quality data-centre floor space is limited. The importance of more green data centres and green hosting is more and more crucial.
