When it comes to choosing the right web host for your site, a few common factors come into play including the pricing, server location, available plans, and customer support. But have you ever asked yourself if a particular provider takes care of the environment while giving the hosting services it offers?

If you haven’t given it a thought, you don’t need to beat yourself for it as you aren’t alone. Millions of other webmasters like you have no idea of what green hosting is all about; luckily, this is exactly what we’re about to show you today.

What is green hosting?

Just as the name suggests, green web hosting entails every action that eco-friendly web hosting providers take to lower the amount of energy used to run websites and also to keep environmental waste at the minimum. The ultimate goal is to protect the environment by ensuring hosting activities impact it as marginally as possible.

Just to give you an idea of how energy-intensive web hosting can be, a typical data center will have tens of thousands of computers, most of which run huge amounts of processes and in the process generate a lot of heat. In fact, studies show that running a single website can consume thousands of watts every year while also releasing an equally large amount of carbon dioxide to the environment.

If necessary measures are not taken therefore, you can imagine how quickly toxic gases can accumulate in the air and how much energy resources can be depleted every year due to hosting activities.

For this reason, a lot is being done to control and regulate how web hosting companies are dealing with gas emissions and energy consumption. For example, some jurisdictions now demand that web hosts pay for their carbon prints and waste management while others require them to invest in energy-saving equipment.

The rise of green web hosts

In the last decade or so, more and more web hosting providers have responded positively to the need to cut down on energy use and promote environmental conservation. Indeed, quite a significant proportion of these providers are increasingly equipping themselves with modern tech that saves a lot of power and releases low amounts of bad emissions. Others have also invested heavily in different forms of carbon offsetting schemes aiming to generate power from renewables like wind, solar, and geothermal sources.

Just recently, Hosting Foundry did research on Singapore to try and find out the strategies used by different hosts in this country to save the ecosystem. GreenGeeks, which was one of the standout performers, was found to be among the most eco-friendly web hosts serving this region.

To give you an idea of just how much this company is devoted to bettering the environment, GreenGeeks puts back to the grind three times the power it consumes for its activities. What this means is that for every kilowatt the provider consumes, it generates three kilowatts from renewable sources of energy which it adds onto the national grid for the general public to use.

The future of green web hosting

Web hosting aside, the world is quickly realizing that some of the resources we’ve used for decades to generate power are getting depleted quite rapidly. For example, materials such as coal are no longer as sustainable as they were a few decades ago and this is why governments and other relevant authorities are now looking for alternative ways to source power.

In view of these changes, a lot is expected to change in how industries, including web hosting, power their processes in 2020 and beyond. For starters, we expect that authorities will get even stricter on the use of unsustainable power sources by either raising tariffs or demanding larger compensations for the affected parties.

On the other hand, we foresee increased campaigns by relevant authorities and environmental bodies and activists geared towards the use of sustainable energy sources to save the dwindling health of the ecosystem. Finally, we predict that more web hosts will invest in various forms of carbon offsetting schemes like Voluntary Emission Reductions (VERs) and Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).

What you can do to support green hosting

As you can imagine, green hosting can be an expensive process as it entails aspects like investing in modern infrastructure and finding appropriate ways to dispose of tech wastes. This explains why most green providers tend to be slightly more expensive than their polluting counterparts.

Having learned the importance of this initiative and its positive impact on the environment, we hope that you won’t find it difficult paying that extra dollar to support a greener world. Choose wisely and be a part of the movement looking to save the world for future generations.