4.1 Choose a Sustainable Hosting Provider
In addition to reducing the environmental impacts of a website, choose a hosting service that mitigates the remaining impacts. To make sure of this, there are many criteria to look for.
Criteria
- Monitor Metrics: To assess the environmental impacts of hosting and detect overconsumption, some indicators are monitored: energy / water usage, CPU / Memory usage, allocation of servers and CPU cores, etc. These indicators are be used to calculate metrics directly related to environmental impacts, such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE). They are displayed to visitors for transparency and monitoring reasons.
- Equipment Longevity: Equipment is managed responsibly by keeping it as long as possible, using it as efficiently as possible, making sure it is certified, and purchasing long-lifespan products.
- Recycling Waste: Waste (including equipment) is recovered, recycled, and upcycled.
- Renewable Electricity: Electricity comes entirely from sources with the lowest possible carbon intensity (ideally generated by wind or solar rather than from non-renewable sources). For example, Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) can help verify the source, or, ideally, prove that electricity comes directly from renewable sources.
- Remaining Emissions: Remaining emissions are compensated, keeping in mind that the priority should be to avoid then reduce them and only compensate for them if they cannot be avoided. Carbon credits may not be sustainable, therefore the effectiveness of an offset solution must be verified, shown to be both environmentally viable and sustainable, and part of a longer-term strategy to eliminate emissions entirely from a chain, benefitting the wider ecosystem.
Impact
High
Effort
Medium
Benefits
- Environmental:
Helps in detecting overconsumption, reduces the environmental impacts of equipment (such as embodied carbon, for instance), and reduces the environmental impacts related to the production of consumed electricity. - Economic:
Reduces the quantity of equipment needed to be purchased.
GRI
- materials: Low
- energy: Low
- water: Low
- emissions: Low
Example
- Some hosting companies display their PUE / WUE. In addition to being a good way for users and possible customers to get insight into this, it is also a good lever to incite competitors to do the same. The Green Hosting Directory from the Green Web Foundation offers a list of hosting companies that claim to use only renewable energies.
Resources
- 2020 Best Practice Guidelines for the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency (PDF)
- 43% of major environmental websites make mass carbon emissions
- An Even More Inconvenient Truth
- AWS WAF: SUS05-BP01 – Use the minimum amount of hardware to meet your needs
- AWS WAF: SUS05-BP04 – Optimize your use of hardware-based compute accelerators
- Benefits of buying sustainable goods and services
- Beyond PUE: Taclking IT’s wasted terawatts (PDF)
- Can you really negate your carbon emissions?
- Carbon Aware Computing: Next Green Breakthrough or New Greenwashing?
- Carbon Awareness
- Carbon Credits vs Renewable Energy Credits
- Carbon Neutral Verification
- Carbon Usage Effectiveness: A Green Grid Data Center Sustainability Metric
- Circular Economy
- Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency (PDF)
- Data Center Water Usage Effectiveness
- Data Centres and Data Transmission Networks
- Data Centres Code of Conduct
- Digital Reset (PDF)
- Electronics and obsolescence in a circular economy
- Energizta
- Energy Consumption in Data Centres and Broadband Communication Networks in the EU
- Equations relating total annual energy consumption and chips energy efficiency
- Europe’s consumption in a circular economy: the benefits of longer-lasting electronics
- [GPFEDS] 4.15 – UX and UI (Dark Patterns) (PDF)
- [GPFEDS] 8.1 – Hosting (Hosting Provider) (PDF)
- [GPFEDS] 8.2 – Hosting (Equipment Policy) (PDF)
- [GPFEDS] 8.3 – Hosting (Power Usage Effectiveness) (PDF)
- [GPFEDS] 8.4 – Hosting (Water Usage Effectiveness) (PDF)
- [GPFEDS] 8.5 – Hosting (Renewable Documentation) (PDF)
- [GPFEDS] 8.6 – Hosting (Local Datacenters) (PDF)
- [GPFEDS] 8.7 – Hosting (Heat Utilization) (PDF)
- [GR491] 1-8002 – Does Cooling Affect Groundwater
- [GR491] 1-8004 – Water Quality From Usage
- [GR491] 1-8005 – Source Of Water
- [GR491] 1-8006 – Water Recovered Or Recycled
- [GR491] 1-8007 – Noise Pollution
- [GR491] 1-8008 – Heat Reusage
- [GR491] 1-8013 – Server Power Efficiency
- [GR491] 1-8014 – Power Usage Effectivness
- [GR491] 1-8016 – Water Usage Effectivness
- [GR491] 1-8017 – Datacenter Best Practices
- [GR491] 2-8023 – Respect for Labor Code
- [GR491] 3-8026 – Power Off When Not In Use
- [GR491] 3-8027 – Physical VS Virtual
- [GR491] 3-8030 – Technical Choice Optimization
- [GR491] 4-8039 – Renewable Energy Usage
- [GR491] 4-8040 – Certified Equipment
- [GR491] 4-8041 – Energy Use Information
- [GR491] 4-8042 – Customer Transparency
- [GR491] 4-8047 – Repair Over Replace
- [GR491] 4-8048 – End-Of-Life
- [GR491] 4-8051 – Cooling Impact
- [GR491] 5-8053 – Efficiency Measurements
- [GR491] 6-8063 – Datacenter Certification
- Green Web Foundation Directory
- How to Choose the Best Green Web Hosting Provider
- I Made My Blog Solar-Powered, Then Things Escalated
- Is carbon compensation a real climate solution?
- Measuring the Emissions & Energy Footprint of the ICT Sector
- New perspectives on internet electricity use in 2030
- Promoting product longevity (PDF)
- Quick Guide to Sustainable Design Strategies
- RECs, PPAs, Allowances and EECs
- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
- Reporting requirements on the energy performance and sustainability of data centres for the Energy Efficiency Directive
- Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless, analysis shows
- Sustainability Guide: Product
- Sustainability Guide: Use
- The circular economy in detail: Deep dive
- The environmental footprint of the digital world (PDF)
- The real climate and transformative impact of ICT
- United Nations [SDGS] Goal 3 (Health & Well-being)
- United Nations [SDGS] Goal 6 (Water & Sanitation)
- United Nations [SDGS] Goal 7 (Sustainable Energy)
- United Nations [SDGS] Goal 9 (Infrastructure)
- United Nations [SDGS] Goal 12 (Consumption & Production)
- United Nations [SDGS] Goal 13 (Climate Change)
- Web Hosting: Renewable Energy & RECs
- What Are Renewable Energy Credits?
- What is a circular economy?
- What is PUE / DCiE? How to Calculate, What to Measure
- Why hyperscale, modular data centers improve efficiency
- Worthless: Chevron’s carbon offsets are mostly junk and some may harm, research says