I just wonder people advertising themselves as green hosting providers, etc. Is there essentially any standards for green hosting and certification issued by any authorities? Or simply making few things with solar energy and plantation can make me green too.

maybe by simply having the simplest company website by white background and a couple of images and text? How greener do you want it to be? :)

seriously..I also wonder how this is done about people claiming here and there...

There's no such thing as green hosting. The production of hardware used natural resources, the datacenter did and yes even the power it is running on is using coal or other natural resources. Even if they claim to use wind/water/solar power it will get mixed with other sources and becomes grey energy. I really hope this ignorant trend stops soon.

I would disagree with you on that.

At the end of the day, although technically you are correct, if one were to use more efficient equipment that is able to host a greater number of sites, utilising less energy, and you were further able to either use directly 'green' power, or to offset it by purchasing that power and adding it to the grid/ and or offset the carbon; why wouldn't that be a better option for those interested in this form of hosting?

There's no such thing as green hosting.

Maybe not in theory, but you can be a greener host. You could say that about anything, nothing (well very little) can be completely green, but there are things that can be done to reduce the negative effects on the environment.

One of the example for green hosting will be the implementation of VPS servers or server virtualization without having extra physical server.

Moving from a green-compliant industry to an eco-friendly net energy producer is an achievable feat for the various preachers of green hosting. Their goal of becoming carbon-neutral business enterprises is worth emulating too. Green hosting is a very welcome idea.

The greenest technology is server virtualization, putting more customers on less equipment. Using renewable electricity to power the equipment would be the next best thing, but no hosting has a zero impact on the environment. So 'green' does not mean zero impact or zero resource use.

There is no 'green' certification, and the term 'green' is not defined anyway. Generally it means less energy intensive than the alternatives, or at least thats what I think of when I see 'Green'. :)

Well maybe someone should make an "authority" to determine when your host is really "green". And offer a seal to those who are.

I definitely agree that if you use more efficient equipments in the Data Center facility with carbon-neutral, you are working more towards Green hosting. The basic idea stands that you should not deplete the natural resources and if you do, make sure you neutralize it!

Generally, customers pay higher price for Green Hosting. However, how we are going to justify it's Green enough? :)

I think the clause is many say 'We try to be as green as possible' and not saying we're amazingly green.

Its not really a stunt. The government gave so many grants to businesses and non-profits to go green, it is almost like paying 50% on a 25 year investment.

Servers need a lot of power, but if you can cut half of it by doing a 1 year investment (or long term), you end up making money!

Green is the way to go, but some big green bucks are needed in the beginning, until the rebates hit.

Some companies out there advertise that they get a good portion of electricity from wind farms.

Technically, anyone who doesn't snail mail invoices can claim they are saving paper.

Absolutely agree that there is a lot of greenwash out there.

Fundamentally, operating megawatts of computing power is never going to be a particularly green exercise - manufacturing, connecting, powering and operating such a facility will always have a carbon impact.

I'm not sure there's much we can do about the manufacturing or connecting sides of the equation (other than incorporating the appropriate criteria in purchasing decisions) but we can make a big difference in operating and powering the facility. We're working with a colo provider who has 100% renewable energy supplied from purely geo-thermal and hydropower sources, so no grey power mix. They also are based in a climate allowing 100% free-air cooling (allowing a PUE of under 1.1), so addressing the operations side of the equation. (And incidentally the power is about a quarter of the price of the UK)

Has anyone seen any numbers for the carbon production in the server manufacturing process? Or for operating a telco network? It would be interesting to see the whole picture.