1&1 Buys Renewable Energy Credits

By Justin Lee, theWHIR.com

October 1, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider 1&1 Internet (www.1and1.com) announced on Wednesday it is purchasing enough Renewable Energy Certificates from the non-profit, Bonneville Environmental Foundation (www.b-e-f.org) to match 100 percent of the electricity used at the company’s Lenexa, Kansas-based facility, which opened last week.
 
Most of the RECs will come from the Bowersock Mills and Power Company’s hydroelectric facility in Lawrence, Kansas, which is certified low impact by the Low Impact Hydro Institute.

1&1 says it has purchased enough renewable energy for the Lenexa, Kansas-based facility to power at least 300 US homes for one year, or emissions of 30,000 tons of CO2 per year.

“1&1 Internet accepts the responsibility to become a green-powered company,” says Oliver Mauss, CEO of 1&1 Internet. “We are proud to now be the first big hosting company with all our data centers’ energy usage offset by renewable, clean energy. We believe this is an important step for every organization to take, and a contribution helping to save our planet.” (more…)

Tags: 1&1 Internet, carbon offsets, renewable energy

Google to Build Water-Based Facility

By  Anastasia Tubanos, theWHIR.com

September 8, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — According to several reports on Monday, search engine giant Google (google.com) has filed a patent for what the company calls a “water-based data center,” which will use waves from the ocean to provide power and cooling to portable facilities.

In its patent, Google writes that its “computing centers are located on a ship or ships, which are then anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away from computers in the data center.”

The patent says the floating data centers will be located three to seven miles off-shore, in 50 to 70 meters of water, and make use of Pelamis Wave Energy Converter (pelamiswave.com) units that turn ocean surface waves into electricity and can be combined to form “wave farms.” (more…)

Tags: data center, Google, patent, renewable energy

Hostivia Launches Eco-Initiative

By David Hamilton, theWHIR.com

August 28, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Linux-based hosting provider Hostivia (hostivia.com) has launched a new ‘green’ initiative to minimize its environmental impact, and offer shared and reseller Web Hosting customers an environmentally friendly alternative.

On Thursday, Nevada-based R&D Technologies subsidiary Hostivia announced that the initiative is focused on improving data center energy efficiency. All future server deployments will use Intel, Supermicro, and Seagate components designed to use less power. The company estimates that new server configurations will reduce power usage by 30 to 40 percent.

“Going green is about more than just corporate responsibility, it’s also good business,” said Rob Tyree, Hostivia CTO. “As we researched green hardware configurations, we learned we can deliver more powerful and reliable hosting solutions while trimming off a huge portion of our energy usage. We reduce our negative impact on the environment, save costs, and meet an important ethical standard?this is a real win-win situation for our company and our community.” (more…)

Tags: data center, energy efficiency, Hostivia, renewable energy, Seagate, solar power, Supermicro

Green Digital Data Archive to be built in Iceland

June 3, 2008 — (GREEN DATA CENTER INFO) —  The Iceland Review Online published a story last month about Data Íslandia (dataislandia.com) announcing plans to build a “green digital data archive” in southwest Iceland.

The construction of the archive is planned to start later this year. Data Íslandia’s operations will be powered by renewable energy, while natural wind cooling will reduce energy useage.

The project is a cooperation between Data Íslandia, Sudurnes Energy Company, VSÓ Consultation, Kanon Architects, ParX Trade Consultancy for IBM and the town council of Sandgerdi.

Tags: Data Íslandia, Iceland, renewable energy

Web Hosting’s Green Movement

By Dennis McCafferty

There’s a shift going on in the hosting world, toward eco-friendly business - as a community of industry associations, government organizations and other would-be policy makers work to define “green” hosting

It may not be easy being green – but it could be worth the effort.

That’s the picture painted by recent activity in the hosting industry: Environmental policy advocates and government leaders are working with industry executives to explore virtualization and other practices as ways of reducing dependence on the energy-sapping equipment now fueling data centers.

In New York, one hosting company is using hybrid vehicles to transport servers, among other efforts.

And in San Antonio, Rackspace, another host, isn’t only turning to virtualization as a way to reduce consumption – it’s launching a comprehensive, company-to-customer series of green initiatives, including supporting wind turbine farms in the US.

“Why are we doing this?” says John Engates, CTO of Rackspace. “Because the environment right now is in a very dangerous state. Internet and data-center infrastructure are growing at a very fast pace, and we’re going to ruin the planet if we don’t do anything about it. As a large data-center operator, our customers expect us to take the initiative to do the right thing. But there are self-serving reasons as well. We save on energy costs and equipment costs to our customers by doing this, and that puts us in a better financial situation.”

  (more…)

Tags: AMD, blade server, cooling, data center, Dell, EPA, government, HP, IBM, Intel, LimeLeap, Logicworks, Rackable Systems, Rackspace, renewable energy, solar, SprayCool, Sun Microsystems, TerraPass, The Green Grid, virtualization, VMware

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