Offsetting vs Sourcing renewable energy – What’s the difference?
Businesses are seriously starting to consider how they can work towards net zero as they develop and implement their Sustainable Strategies.
However, companies often miss a key element to minimise their online carbon footprint and have the most impact as part of their sustainable strategies… Switching to Green Hosting!
When it comes to choosing a green web hosting provider, it’s essential it fits in with your Sustainable Strategies and standards.
A common mistake to make is not understanding the difference between providers which are offsetting and those which are sourcing renewable energy. Here’s what you need to know!
When developing your sustainable strategies, it’s important you aren’t led to believe your hosting provider is sourcing 100% renewable energy, when in fact, they are merely offsetting it.
You may find some hosting companies claim to be sustainable because they’ve invested in environmental projects to offset and compensate for their carbon emissions.
Carbon offsetting does not effectively reduce climate change. It simply attempts to repair the damage continually being caused.
The power to run your server is still coming from a CO2 emissions source thereby having a negative impact on the environment.
Whilst we support Ecologi to offset our teams individual carbon footprint, we certainly don’t use carbon offsetting to power our servers.
When it comes to truly making a difference to the environmental impact, you want your actual web hosting to be sourced directly from a certified 100% renewable energy data centre.
This minimises your online carbon footprint and damage caused to the environment – exactly what you want to make the best choices as part of your sustainable strategies.
We hold an official SSE Green Electricity Certificate to confirm our hosting is powered by 100% renewable energy, generated by wind and hydro assets using Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGOs).
Our sustainable hosting is able to reduce the impact of 83.9% of a server’s life cycle* (based on Dell PowerEdge servers analysis).
In addition to this, we’ve chosen to use Dell PowerEdge servers which are made from recycled materials, and when they reach the end of life, they go to be recycled again!
We all have a responsibility to minimise our online carbon footprint. So when your company is considering its Sustainable Strategies, don’t forget this simple switch to Green Hosting to make a big change towards a greener future, but make sure it’s the right switch! Go for 100% sourced renewable energy, not offset.