May 9, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Joining in the widespread push toward a greener hosting business, hosting provider Hosting.com (hosting.com) reported Friday that it is working with Louisville Gas and Electric, purchasing "green" energy that will offset more than 1,500 tons of carbon emissions annually.
Declaring its intention of "leading the commercial sector in green initiatives," Hosting.com says it will buy 208 "green energy blocks" for each of the next 12 months.
Each of the $13 blocks accounts for 1,000 kilowatt hours of energy produced from local renewable resources. Hosting.com says its total purchase over the next year is "equivalent to planting approximately 1,310 acres of trees, or removing 304 cars from the road."
The green energy program operated by LG&E and Kentucky Utilities intends to support the development of renewable energy resources, such as the Mother Ann Lee Hydroelectric Plant, by enabling Kentucky residents and small business to purchase blocks starting at $5 per month. Commercial customers, such as Hosting.com can purchase blocks starting at $13 per month.
Money spent on green energy blocks, such as the roughly $2,700 per-month Hosting.com will spend over the next year, is in addition to its regular energy purchase.
"Hosting.Com is our first industrial customer to completely offset its annual carbon emissions. They've also done this in their California and Boston offices, and we are pleased they've chosen to take part in the LG&E program," says John P. Malloy, VP of energy delivery, retail business, for E.ON U.S., parent company of LG&E, in the press release announcing the purchase.
More than 500 customers are reportedly currently enrolled in the green energy program. An information page for the program is set up on the utility's website.
There is some criticism of the so-called "offset" approach to environmentalism, which has become somewhat popular in the hosting business lately. Opponents say that buying credits to offset carbon emissions is a poor substitute for more direct efforts at reducing power consumption and using renewable energy resources directly.
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This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
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One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
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Comment by Anonymous on Monday, May 12, 2008
Isn't $0.013 per kWh less than what datacenters normally pay for power? I thought power was between $0.04 - $0.12 per KWh?
Comment by Anonymous on Monday, May 12, 2008
Hey Doug,
As I understand it, the offering is an offset. So you pay money in addition to your regular power bill and the Louisville power company makes sure it pulls X amount of power on to the grid from renewable sources. The pricing says $5 for 300 KWH here on the green energy program website: (http://www.eon-us.com/green/default.asp)