Hope, hype and other shades of green

I am moderating a green hosting panel tomorrow, featuring DreamHost CTO Dallas Kashuba, SoftLayer COO Sam Fleitman and SWSoft director of marketing Doug Johnson. EasyStreet CEO Rich Bader ditched us :(

So maybe you don't buy Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. But at a time when 94% of Americans want to help the environment (according to ABC News) and more than half wish their companies were more eco-responsible (says Adecco; Joel Makower has more details on these and many other stats), I'm not sure you can afford to ignore the people-pleasing potential of going green.

Citicorp, for one, sees a $50 billion opportunity in addressing climate change. Among the company's many commitments is a 10% reduction of green house gas emissions by 2011. Google, Yahoo and News Corp have set even more ambitious goals of becoming carbon neutral by 2007/2007/2010, respectively. Walmart is pressuring suppliers to achieve a 5% reduction in packaging by 2013, leading to 67 million fewer gallons of fuel consumption per year. Macy's plans to generate 8 megawatts of green power by installing solar panels at 26 stores. Home Depot's Eco Options program will identify 6,000 earth friendly products by 2009. Tesco, a British supermarket chain, plans to assign a "carbon rating" to each of the 70,000 items it sells...

If green initiatives sound expensive, consider the Greening of Adobe: the company LEED certified 3 of its buildings last year, reducing electricity usage by 35%, water consumption by 22% and solid waste production by 90%. It saved $1,182,000 in the process. Qualcomm, a LEED candidate, also cut its utility bill by 9,668,000 kWh in 2006. In view of SearchDataCenter's survey result that 31% of respondents face 10% or greater increases in electricity rates, eco-responsibility starts making operational as well as marketing sense.

But anyway, back to green hosting. Rackspace UK, I think, pioneered the concept last year; it plants a tree for each new server sold. But ThinkHost does the Rackers one better, planting a tree for each $5.95 hosting account AND powering its operations with wind and solar energy. Pair Networks offsets emissions through carbon credits from TerraPass; it also hosts TreeHugger.com, a popular green business site. 365 Main has committed to full LEED certification at of its data centers. Centrinet says its SmartBunker runs on zero carbon energy. Same goes for Ask.com's new Moses Lake, WA facility. But the company I find most intriguing is AISO ("web hosting as nature intended") whose website offers real time updates on its 100% solar powered network conditions...

These represent only a small handful of examples; did you know that Google returns over 60 million search results for "green hosting"? I'm looking forward to hearing about DreamHost's and SoftLayer's green initiatives, as well as Doug's take on the role of virtualization in green data centers.

Comments

[Cameron Jones]

Ask.com's facility is in Moses Lake, not Moose Lake :)

When I was at HostPro we owned a facility up there as well, but at the time T1's were several thousand per month -- aka not a real datacenter.

[John N.]

I think it is great that Adobe can save over 1 million and help the environment. If being environmental can save money, then it's great.

I don't think buying carbon offsets from a company like Terrapass.com is beneficial to anyone, especially shareholders (you spent company money on WHAT?).

I don't know much about that company, but I just looked at their web site. So for $30 I can drive my car guilt free? For another sum of cash I can fly around guilt free. "A fool and his money are soon parted."

[Kevin Laude]

Indeed. That reminds me of the weather. The torrential rains in northern Texas the past month seem to have finally balanced out 3 years of drought, so my town lifted it's water restrictions. Does that mean we can all go back to watering our lawns 4 times a week? :)

I imagine you'd get better traction in the environmental community by going with a non-profit carbon offset group like carbonfund.org. Here's a pretty interesting comparison of offset companies: http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/carbon_offset_wind_credits_carbon_reduction .

[Michael Bloch]

Thanks for the mention Isabel! ThinkHost has been a green web host since 2005, but prior to that we were (and remain) very active in sponsoring environmental projects. It's been really encouraging to see others in the industry take up the green challenge in recent times!

[Rich Bader]

Ditched is such a harsh word. My public apologies for missing what I'm sure was a great panel.

Had I been there I could have talked about EasyStreet's green program.

http://tinyurl.com/yssp9v

We've got a Green Team from folks around the company that are passionate about the topic. Our biggest accomplishment so far is our green power commitment: we're paying a 20% premium to get half of our power from a wind farm. We are also encouraging our colo customers to pay to get the other half be green for them, so they can claim to be all green powered. We give them stickers for their racks and other promotion. Because there's so much green activity in the state of Oregon, about a dozen customers have signed up so far, and we believe the promotion of the program is bringing us business. So the extra cost for green power is a "marketing expense".

Keep up the focus on this topic. Data centers are using a significant amount of power already and of course our usage is growing faster than the average. We need to do what we can, and we can all do something.

Rich

[Isabel Wang]

Cameron - I remember HostPro! And multi-thousand dollar T-1s. Those were the days :) Thanks for the Moses Lake correction; fixed.

John & Kevin - I see carbon offsetting as a kind of "it's the thought that counts" gesture. It shows your concern, but doesn't make much of a different on its own. I wish offsets were positioned as a first step rather than a "drive SUVs guilt free" license.

Michael - You've been doing this since 2005? Wow. You guys are a green pioneer! And I'm definitely seeing more and more green adoption within and beyond the industry.

Rich - We missed you! Would love to hear more about your Green Team. Maybe at ISPCON. 20% premium is a substantial commitment; what's even better is you're encouraging customers to participate.

[jonolan]

And so at last the Environmentalists learn that working WITH business instead of against it ACTUALLY achieves results!

[Tim]

AISO.Net has been green since 2001 with its solar panels and I hear they are working on getting another ~240-430 panels on top of its 120 solar panels it currently has right now. So I think they are the one who has been green the longest. Solar panels on-site, now that is green for you, they don't even generate the pollution in the first place so there is no need to buy energy credits like everyone else.