By Justin Lee, theWHIR.com
October 1, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider 1&1 Internet (1and1.com) announced on Wednesday it is purchasing enough Renewable Energy Certificates from the non-profit, Bonneville Environmental Foundation (b-e-f.org) to match 100 percent of the electricity used at the company’s Lenexa, Kansas-based facility, which opened last week.
Most of the RECs will come from the Bowersock Mills and Power Company’s hydroelectric facility in Lawrence, Kansas, which is certified low impact by the Low Impact Hydro Institute.
1&1 says it has purchased enough renewable energy for the Lenexa, Kansas-based facility to power at least 300 US homes for one year, or emissions of 30,000 tons of CO2 per year.
“1&1 Internet accepts the responsibility to become a green-powered company,” says Oliver Mauss, CEO of 1&1 Internet. “We are proud to now be the first big hosting company with all our data centers’ energy usage offset by renewable, clean energy. We believe this is an important step for every organization to take, and a contribution helping to save our planet.”
BEF uses revenues made from the sale of RECs to directly support new renewable energy projects and watershed ecosystem restoration. All of the RECs’ that 1&1 will buy from BEF will be certified under the Green-e Energy program (green-e.org), a voluntary certification program for renewable energy.
The Green-e program, administered by the Center for Resource Solutions, has been certifying renewable energy that meets environmental and consumer protection standards that it developed in conjunction with leading environmental, energy and policy organizations.
The organization offers three certification programs in Green-e Climate, Green-e Energy and Green-e Marketplace.
Green-e Climate is a voluntary certification program that sets consumer-protection and environmental-integrity standards for greenhouse gas emission reductions sold in the voluntary market, Green-e Energy is an independent certification and verification program for renewable energy, and Green-e Marketplace enables companies to display the logo when they have purchased a qualifying amount of renewable energy and passed Green-o verification standards.
The act of purchasing carbon offsets or renewable energy certificates has drawn considerable controversy within the industry. Some environmentalists believe that this sort of practice is nothing more than a marketing tactic for IT companies to proclaim they have gone ‘green,’ without doing the actual legwork of reducing their own carbon emissions by using renewable energy sources.
On the flip side, many would argue that participating in a carbon offset program is, at the very least, a bare minimum alternate solution for a company to contribute to green efforts.
Last week, Australian web hosting provider Digital Pacific announced it is now purchasing carbon credits to match the estimated amount of energy it uses. Earlier in September, telecommunication solutions provider WireIE Holdings International partnered with carbon offset provider Carbonzero to help Canadian IT firms lower carbon emissions by monitoring and selling carbon offsets.
