Hosting and cloud service providers are forced to have so-called server farms, or data centres. These are structures in which numerous servers are located, managing different kinds of data. But what impact do they have on the environment?

Environmental impact

Servers must be kept running constantly, which forces them to consume a huge amount of energy. It is clear that any server farm must guarantee a constant temperature over time and this means having to run air conditioners, often for 24 hours a day, continuously. A data farm necessarily has an impact on the environment, as it absorbs large amounts of electricity.

The solution

There is a solution to this amount of pollution: sustainable and environmentally friendly hosting. Many providers have in fact specialised in offering hosting services with low impact on the environment, such as the green hosting of IONOS or Artera Swiss. In order to be able to make a hosting service carbon-neutral, there are several tricks that can be used in combination.

Green hosting

First of all, the energy used to power the servers is obtained from renewable sources. There are now many energy supply companies that offer their customers energy obtained from wind or solar power plants; in a more ‘traditional’ way, it comes from hydroelectric power plants. Some server farms, however, seek to reduce the production of carbon dioxide in the environment by using renewable sources of their own, in effect placing clean energy production plants in the area.

Thanks to these measures, it is now possible to speak of sustainable web hosting, a solution that allows those who wish to set up a website to avoid a major impact on the environment around us.

Freely adapted and translated from https://www.notonlyfire.it/

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