Greener Web Hosting to Advocate the use of Climate Friendly Web Hosting Services

Helsinki, Finland (PRWEB) June 30, 2009 -- A new website called Greener Web Hosting (http://www.greenerwebhosting.com) has been launched to advocate the use of environmentally friendly web hosting services. The website was founded by a Finnish climate change activist to help people find information about solar and wind powered web hosting providers. It is also a place for users to share their experiences about different green hosting services and get unbiased green hosting reviews (http://www.greenerwebhosting.com/reviews/).

"There are already so many green hosting providers to choose from, including some big and reputable web hosting companies, that there should be a green hosting plan available for every need. The challenge is in finding the best one for you, and this is where Greener Web Hosting will help," says Juuso Voltti, founder of GreenerWebHosting.com.

Web servers might sound like an insignificant source of emissions when talking about climate change - but with a closer look this turns out to be very far from the truth. The sheer number of websites and web servers is so astounding and the industry growing so rapidly that CO2 emissions from web hosting services have been predicted to exceed those from the airline industry by 2020. Already, the world's 44 million servers consume 0.5 percent of all electricity, with data center emissions now approaching the levels of whole countries such as Argentina or the Netherlands, according to a study by McKinsey & Company (http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/pdf/Data_Centers.pdf).

"Most people have never thought about their websites as sources of greenhouse gas emissions and therefore aren't looking for greener alternatives. With so many people being worried and wanting to do something about climate change, it is only a matter of informing people that website emissions are considerable and that alternatives exist," says Voltti.

It's not only the actual servers that need electricity. As electronic devices in data centers are running day and night, they keep generating excessive heat. Heat is not good for computers and makes it necessary for the server rooms to have proper air conditioning - which again needs considerable amounts of energy. Some green hosting companies have even calculated the emissions of their offices and employees commuting to work and offset all these emissions to become carbon neutral.

One might expect to see the price of renewable energy directly in the hosting plans, but you can hardly see this in the prices at all. One explanation is that these green hosting companies have often taken better advantage of available energy saving technologies, such as virtualization, in their data centers. This translates into savings which compensate for the added costs of renewable energy. The cheapest web hosting companies listed on Greener Web Hosting have hosting plans starting from $4.95 per month.

About Juuso Voltti and Greener Web Hosting website:

Juuso Voltti is a climate change activist and the climate campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth Finland. The Greener Web Hosting website was launched as a small scale project to inform people about the emissions caused by web hosting services and the green hosting alternatives.

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