More Wind and Solar-Powered Web Hosting
by Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada 
on 05.26.05
Yesterday we wrote about solar-powered web hosting. The company we mentioned is not alone in that field; there are many more hosting providers that are powered by wind or solar (either directly from solar panels and wind turbines, or by buying clean energy credits from the utility company). If you have a website, or are thinking of creating one, please consider green hosting. Have a look at the companies I found...
- WebCtel – Solar
- SolarWebWorks – Solar
- EcoSky – Solar & wind
- The Green Web Host – Mixed sources, mostly wind I think
- Locomotive Media – Wind
- Elfon – Wind
- SustainableMarketing – Wind
- Aiso - Solar
- Taproot Hosting
This list is by no mean exhaustive, and if you are interested in eco-friendly web hosting, by all means, shop around. It must also be made clear that TreeHugger is not endorsing these companies, for we have not tried their services (yet?). Doing a background check and googling around for opinions from customers is always a good idea before opening your wallet.
[by MGR]
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Solarhost is in fact solar-powered; but they are also just awful. We had them drop our email connection for several days at a time three times over the course of a year, and their checks for subscriptions, conference space, etc., routinely bounce...I'd highly recommend examining some of these other options.
Just wanted to comment- when I shopped around for an environmental hosting company, i realised that some of them don't actually have their servers running on alternative power - for example SustainableMarketing.com and earthsite.net purchase alternative energy credits for servers that dont even exist in the same location as their
offices -and their servers live in facilities that aren't run on alternative energy (which means my website would not have been running on alternative energy). it does help to shop around.
It is a pretty big investment to rely solely on Solar Panels. And it can lead to network downtime if you haven't got the necessary backup solutions. We also host somewhat cleanly, and that's why we have decided to offset the electricity our servers use with Certificates. That way, we can offer the same speed and reliability to our clients than other hosting companies. Until we can pay for our own clean highly backed-up datacenter, that is...
Thanks to Treehugger for the post! We'd like to offer all treehugger visitors a free first month of web hosting buy using the coupon LUVTREES at checkout on SustainableMarketing.com
BTW, Certificates are really the only solution if you want to have a professional web site presence. The wind doesn't blow strongly enough where most data centers are located. Right now the big guys are not going to pony up the $1.2M for a wind turbine (or even more for the equivalent energy in solar) - Our strategy is to work with hosting datacenters that are profesiionally managed , and at the same time, build a constituency of people and paying customers that can influence the big players in the indstry.
And, to be honest, having the data center professionally monitored leaves us more time to focus on helping green businesses flourish and better customer service.
Hey folks, we're having some confusion over the coupon method, so I set up a special link for all the groovy treehugger readers out there: http://www.sustainablemarketing.com/treehuggerspecial. This special expires on October 1st, 2005.
I have AISO.Net(www.aiso.net) as my solar host and they are awesome! I recommend them 100%. There support is great, and they have more then just solar panels to help them out. Check out them on Wired(http://www.wired.com/news/planet/0,2782,67785,00.html) and Entrepreneur(http://www.entrepreneur.com/mag/article/0,1539,324100,00.html) magazines, They also just had a press release I saw here:
http://www.cheaphostingdirectory.com/news-green-web-hosting-data-center-features-solar-power-1534.html
ThinkHost, Inc is a progressive principles based web hosting
company, established in 1999. We are 100%
renewable energy powered through a wind/solar mix. We'd like to
provide TreeHugger visitors a very special offer:
Free setup and first month free on our Smart
Essentials plan. Use this coupon code on the order
form, you'll see a field for it: THD99999M18
After the first month, there's no obligation to stay on with us, but we
sincerely hope you do :). You can elect to upgrade/downgrade your account at the
end of the free month - at no cost. Progressive/environmentally conscious
clients are invited to contact us after the free month and we'll also apply a
further 10% ongoing discount on monthly fees.
I just wan to report about 3 isp's using renewable energy in Germany:
free.de
+
nmmn.de
+
trilos.de
We keep track of those providers on our dedicated wiki ecologee.net
Great article at a time three times over the course of a year, and their checks for subscriptions, conference space, etc http://www.cyberdesignz.com/ you can get more feed back from this
A list of UK based hosts can be found on Ethical Junction.
http://www.ethical-junction.org/it/hosting/
Taproot seems like a scam! I signed up and then nothing and the phone wasn't working. The was hardly any info or downloads in the confusing panel either. Unfortunately, we have to go with known entities to protect our wallets first.