The Internet is perhaps one of the greatest technological advances of our time.
It gives us the ability to connect and share information instantly, plus the potential to dramatically reduce our need for travel; thereby reducing the amount of CO2 emissions we produce.
But how much CO2 is the Internet itself producing?
According to recent research published by the NewScientist, the electricity consumption figure is now about 16 terawatts, which means the Internet is currently consuming around 2 per cent of the all the energy used by humanity.
How Clean is Your Cloud?
What percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to the IT sector? This recent report by Greenpeace has some surprises and takes a look at the energy choices some of the largest and fastest growing IT companies are making, as the race to build “the cloud” creates a new era of technology.
The real problem is this. Around 50% of all energy usage still comes from the burning of fossil fuels (coal or natural gas) or from nuclear plants.
And some of these “Carbon Neutral” web hosting companies you read about are not reducing the total amount of fossil fuels being used to create electricity. Most of them are simply taking their power from the grid and planting a few trees to try and ~ eventually ~ compensate for the ‘greenhouse gas’ they’re producing.
Most of them are taking their power from the grid and planting a few trees to try and compensate…This is a very important difference. With most of these so called “green” web hosting companies who offset their energy use by buying carbon credits or green tags (also called renewable energy certificates), the energy powering their servers comes from the common energy grid.
This is the key difference between “carbon neutral” and “carbon free”.
Our servers produce virtually zero emissions! We are far beyond “carbon neutral.” When you host your website with us, you are taking your website “off the grid” and reducing demand on the power grid in a very real way.
All Social Strategy’s client web servers run on 100% renewable wind-power, geothermal and hydro-electricity. Each of them powered by sustainable “carbon-free” energy. This is very different from companies who buy “carbon credits” or plant trees to offset their energy use.
In each of our data centers the energy comes directly from renewable resources: the earth’s energy.
By hosting with us you are actually using our renewable energy systems to reduce the production of green house gases, not just paying a little extra to keep on polluting!
