Wiser Websites is now green hosting
We are pleased to announce that Wiser Websites hosting now runs on 100% renewable power.
We still guarantee the same speedy and dependable hosting services, but now able to do it in a more environmentally friendly way. This certainly will not impact our customers as there is no extra charge, and you have been moved to the new green hosting already!
Why did we make the change?
Firstly, the internet uses a lot of power. It is estimated that data centres are responsible for between 1% and 3% of all global energy use. This causes greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore contributes to climate change.
“As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun’s heat. This leads to global warming and climate change. The world is now warming faster than at any point in recorded history.”
United Nations
Therefore, as a company who has a lot of data centres we became aware of the impact we were having on the environment and no longer wanted to be a part of this statistic.
“Cisco predicted that the internet will account for 3.5% of global carbon emissions by 2025, and Microsoft predict by that time, data centres will rank among the largest users of electrical power on the planet”
Tom Greenwood at the WordPress Meetup London.
Up to now, it was difficult to find a provider that would offer the right level of reliability and performance that we’re not only known for, but what our customers deserve.
Thankfully, that’s changed, so we’ve now moved to sustainable web hosting using 100% renewable energy.
Most commonly, our power comes from wind and solar, but it could also include other sources like wave power, tidal power, geothermal power and more.
Wind and solar energy are quite similar in the fact that they both convert natural resources we can’t control and convert them into electricity. Wind turbines are like a huge fan however rather than giving out wind it embraces the wind making it turn, therefore producing energy. As for solar there are panels that are places in sunlight and absorbs the heat/ energy from the sun and coverts into energy we can use.
Energy efficient servers
Sometimes we generate more energy than we need to power our servers. If this happens, we put the remainder of the ‘Clean energy’ into the grid to be used instead of fossil-fuel power.
It is important to us that our hosting site is as efficient as possible. They have an extremely low Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.12. This measure – where lower is better – is the industry standard for how efficiently a hosting sight uses its power.
Here’s a broad idea of how PUE is often viewed:
| PUE | Efficiency Level |
|---|---|
| 2.5+ | Very Inefficient |
| 2.0 | Inefficient |
| 1.6 | Average |
| 1.2 | Efficient |
| 1.1 | Very Efficient |
A perfect score of 1.0 would be impossible.
As of 2020, the average PUE for UK and US datacentres was about 1.6. Therefore, having a tier 3 Hosting site PUE of 1.12 is a great achievement. In addition, their cooling uses low GWI (global warming impact) refrigerants, and their new modular uninterruptible power supply saves over 100,000 Kg of CO2 over a year.
