The chances are if you have a website already, you know a bit about web hosting and the various options of hosting in Ireland. To interact with services like Netflix or Ebay, those sites need to live or be 'hosted' in a data centre. There are many companies who offer the technologies and services needed for a website to be seen on the Internet. What you probably didn't know, is the impact of these technologies on the environment.
The environmental impact
The challenges of web hosting
- The more content people create, the more hosting needed to house it. All those photos on instagram and videos on Youtube need to be hosted somewhere so they can be seen. On average, 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute of the day to Youtube.
- Advances in technology such 5g, cryptocurrency and the internet of things (iot) mean more data will need to processed and stored.
- Storing data through cloud-based servers takes power. We don't have data on Ireland so lets look at the UK. In 2016 the world’s data centres used significantly more than power than the UK's total electricity consumption, which is a whopping 300 terrawatt hours. To translate that into Irish, that's over three hundred trillion boiled kettles and a lot of cups of tea.
What can can be done
- As more powerful internet access becomes accessible by more people, governments need to take notice and provide scalable plans for future renewable energy sources.
- Some internet companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google are starting to recognise the issue and taking an environmentally responsible approach.
- One of the solutions involves moving data centres to cold climates. The power used to run the data centres produces heat. as a result more power is then needed to cool the servers. By moving servers to colder climates such as Iceland, simply letting in the artic air solves that problem but may present others.
- We believe there could be a future of server farms cooled by sea water and powered by a combination of wind and wave powered green technology. Ireland would be the perfect location for technologies like this.
What you can do
At some point we've all googled free web hosting, most likely like with some dodgy options returned. As a consumer, the first thing you can do is choose to host your website responsibly. Funnily enough there are a lot of searches on Google for green web hosting services in Iceland, which we see as a great sign of people wanting to make the switch to greener alternatives.
For those looking for environmentally friendly vendors, one option is Greengeeks.com, a hosting platform that has been designed and built to be as energy efficient as possible.
For all the energy they pull from the grid, they match that 3 times in the form of renewable energy via Bonneville Environmental Foundation.
Your website will be hosted on a 300% green hosting platform so you can feel good that you're helping to make a difference by hosting on a platform that is eco-friendly, and can fit in as part of a sustainable lifestyle. Getting started is simple, if you don't have a domain name already you can register one as part of the sign up process. We recommend using Wordpress for a blog.
For a win-win outcome you can sign up with our affiliate link. Not only can you host your website responsibly but also refer a donation towards funding a wilding project.
If you're interested in green tech check out how biomimicry is used to draw inspiration from nature when solving modern day problems, or learn about the challenges presented by cryptocurrency. For more tips on how to live a more sustainable lifestyle in general check out our blog post.
