What Can You do to Go Green Today?
- By Liam Eagle on March 07, 2007
-
Share
|
Send |
Print |
(3) Comments
Reddit
Newsvine
Stumbleupon
Twitter
FacebookIn the last few weeks, in particular, we've covered a flood of new news about Web hosts and data center operators taking steps to make their facilities, or their operations, more environmentally friendly.
The volume of coverage is not a product of any particular agenda of ours (personally, of course, I'm certainly for any widespread effort to instill environmentally friendly business and technology practices in our industry).
In fact, the sudden flood of green hosting stories is simply the product of a sudden flood of green hosting news. That is, the idea of operating Web hosting businesses to consume less energy and create fewer emissions - and to compensate for the energy consumed and emissions created - has quickly become ubiquitous, for ethical reasons, financial reasons and for basic reasons of energy availability.
For any one of those reasons, or for any of countless other reasons, you may be beginning to wonder what you can do to make your business more environmentally friendly.
Last week, amid the announcements of environmental efforts undertaken by specific Web hosting businesses, we covered the launch of a new organization, The Green Grid, formed with the specific intent of promoting energy efficiency in data centers and IT equipment. The group hopes to accomplish that, in part, by developing metrics for measuring the energy efficiency of data center implementations and industry standards for efficiency.
With a list of participants that includes Microsoft, IBM, AMD, Dell, HP, Intel and several others, it would be difficult to argue, at the very least, against the seriousness of the effort.
The organization offers paid membership, which provides access to intellectual property and the right to participate in policy- and decision-making.
But membership aside, there is plenty of information available (in PDF format) on the group's Web site, including:
An overview of the incentive for energy efficient data center operations
Guidelines for energy-efficient data centers
Metrics for describing data center power efficiency
Of course, at this stage you may not be at a point where you can budget $25,000 annually to become a voting member of any committee formed by some upstart organization. But it's certainly worth your while to start reading the information that's out there.
Energy efficiency standards for data centers are going to begin rolling out rapidly, and soon. And form there, it's not much of a stretch to imagine that before long, certain of those standards may become officially enforced regulations.
Besides, it would be difficult to find a really sound argument against making your business more environmentally friendly.
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with We... (Read full bio)
Comment anonymously or log into your WHIR account
Comment by Anonymous on Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Speaking of going green, I spotted this post via Jon Price's blog:
http://billboebel.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/carbon_neutral_.html
Webmail.us calculated that it takes 2.9631576 kWh to host each of its 400,000 mailboxes. They're encouraging customers to offset associated carbon emissions. The price comes out to... $0.01 per mailbox per year.
Similarly, Salesforce.com is picking up the tab for offsetting its 556,000 subscribers' 2006 emissions at a cost of $0.02 per user per month.
Comment by Anonymous on Thursday, March 08, 2007
The carbon credits system is really interesting too. I don't think it really falls under the auspices of what The Green Grid is all about, since it seems to be more of a infrastructure group interested in imposing standards on the folks who build hardware.
I was thinking about carbon credits while I was posting this, though, and it occured to me that I didn't have much more than a vague understanding of what they are and how they work.
I'd like to do a little more research and maybe make another post later dealing more specifically with carbon credits. I think it's really interesting that they seem to present the possibility for a small hosting provider, even a small reseller who doesn't really have any control over its own infrastructure, to have some control over the environmental impact of its business.
Very cool.
Comment by Anonymous on Monday, April 02, 2007
We are very happy to see the awaking of the IT industry turning versa renewable energies. ecologee.net keeps track of those green web hosters and datacenters reorganizing their processes with energy efficient euquipment, recycling of their "waste" thermal power and usage of renewables.
By the time the density of datacenters grows we will approach providers of backbones with their repeaters to follow that direction.
Related Content
Most Popular
 |
OLDER: Web Hosting SEO Expert Shifts Gear, Becomes Social Media Evangelist | | | NEWER: HTML 5: the next generation, or largely a pointless effort? |  |
Logging in allows enhanced commenting features (such as external linking) in news, features, blogs and more.