Is green web hosting real?

Unless you have been cut off from civilization for the past 10 years, you may have noticed the green movement.  Yes, it seems like everywhere you turn someone is pushing the environment and we are all going to die if something is not done now!  Now don’t get me wrong, We are all for doing our part to help the environment and apparently so are a few web hosting companies.

So your in the market to purchase web hosting and want to help the environment along the way. We've researched a couple of web hosting companies that claim to use 100% wind energy.  These companies insist that they are 100% green web hosting.  That sounds great for a hobby or family based site but I am not so sure I want to rely on wind power to keep my business site up and running.  Needless to say we were skeptical and needed to dig further into these claims.

Most of these green web hosting companies, clearly states on their homepage that “their web hosting is powered by 100% wind energy.”  They also have neat little graphics and wind generators on their site that gives the appearance that they may have wind turbines on their corporate building.  Sounds great but what happens to my service if the wind stops blowing?  Don’t worry about your service because they aren’t really using wind power.  They are buying “energy certificates” to offset all of their electricity and they get their electricity the same place you do.  These green web hosting companies have a disclaimer that states something along the lines of “Generating wind energy on site isn't feasible, so we are offsetting all of our electricity use with wind-generated Renewable Energy Certificates.”  These green web hosting companies are clearly concerned about the environment and they seem to be doing their part.  Just don’t get caught up in a fancy website with cool graphics and believe that you are using a hosting service that is powered by a wind turbine in their back yard. You certainly will not lose your service due to a change in the wind blowing. 

 
The bottom line in searching for green web hosting is to read the fine print and understand exactly what is meant by the term green web hosting.  Although most of these companies are not powered directly thru wind or solar they are purchasing green power is some form or another.  We should all be concerned about the environment and do our part to pass on a clean planet to our children so we would support these companies and their efforts.