Cheap Green Web Hosting
What Does Being “Green” Mean?
Within the context of web hosting, it generally means that hosting equipment in the data center is powered by some type of renewable energy, usually wind and/or solar. At times, that also includes business offices.
I used to imagine a wind turbine or two out behind the building, but that’s not how it works. Sometimes carbon offsets are purchased from energy companies that generate renewable power. Other times, the data center itself generates its own green energy.
According to Information Week, data centers in the U.S. in 2000 had approximately 5.6 million servers installed. By 2005 that number had jumped to 10.3 million. Worldwide during the same time period, the number of servers increased from 14.1 million to 26 million. In a mere five years, energy consumption doubled.
The report also stated, when you throw in the power consumed by data center’s auxiliary infrastructure equipment, including network and cooling gear, that figure jumps to 1.2% of all electricity consumed in the United States. That’s about equivalent to all color televisions in the United States.
On December 2, 2009, IBM helped launch a green data center with New York’s Syracuse University that boasts of being one of the world’s greenest, designed to reduce power consumption and emissions. The 12,000 square-foot facility generates its own power and is expected to use 50% less energy than a comparably sized data center using traditional power sources and hardware.
On October 5, 2009, President Obama signed Executive Order 31514 which sets sustainability goals for the U.S. government. Within 90 days, agencies are required to set a target for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020 and to recycle or otherwise divert 50% of their waste by 2015. The order also touches on the energy impact of federal data centers. Federal agencies must now implement best practices for energy-efficient servers and data center management. That includes implementing power management policies, double-sided printing, and “other environmentally preferable” features on computer equipment.
My first experience with green web hosting was in 2007. Green hosting wasn’t new, but not many companies embraced it as it was still an expensive and customers weren’t always willing to spend the extra money. Especially since web hosting companies often limited disk space and bandwidth on their green hosting plans.
In 2009 there was an explosion of web hosting companies offering unlimited cheap green hosting plans for only a few dollars a month and more are converting each month. iPage web hosting was one of those companies, however, they went the extra mile for their customers by offering an “anytime guarantee”. iPage takes the standard 30-day money back guarantee burn-in period and stretches it to anytime. If at anytime during your stay you don’t want to continue with your web hosting account, they’ll pro-rate and refund the unused portion.