What hosting provider do we have until know, for the global website and the local instances ? Are they aligned with our values or not ?
I’m asking that question as we pointed in the research project and report we are issuing soon that it’s indeed hard to weight the positive environmental impact gained through local food chains and the negative environmental impact of computering (hosting, but also rare earths). And I see more and more websites advertising for the fact that their site is powered by a green hoster and they are careful about the impact of digital activities.
I would like us to be more transparent about our stake on this. If we choose not to go for a green hoster, why (can also be that we would like to but have not yet taken the time to investigate, but we can say we care!), and else, especially for the new global website, maybe it’s the occasion to start working with green hosters.
Also, a second criteria is transparency about data protection, and the place where data are hosted can also have an impact. If they are hosted in the US for instance, the Patriot Act authorize public administrations to have access to any private data. Which is not the case in Europe for instance where the law protects people privacy much better.
I don’t know about the service quality various hosters provide, so tech will need to have a look.
I put here some links about ranking on green hosting. Some buy certificate, compensate their emissions. Other really implement facilities to not produce CO2, like optimizing their building to use air cooling for cold outside and use heat from servers to heat other buildings, those kind of things. It could be an interesting topic to give to some student willing to help
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https://www.infomaniak.com/en/green-hosting have their datacenters in Swizerland, and looks like they have a super zero emission policy, not certificates. Lot of French environmental NGOs work with them like Greenpeace, Wikimedia Foundation, etc. They look great to me !
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For example in UK there is https://www.webwiz.net/green-hosting/ or https://www.kualo.co.uk/webhosting/green-web-hosting (they do wordpress hosting). Both datacenters are in the UK.
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In the Netherland (servers located there): https://greenhost.net/products/hosting/
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In the US, https://www.greengeeks.com/web-hosting/ but they only compensate, but 3 times what they consume. They have multiple server location, among them one in Canada and one in the Netherland. https://www.greengeeks.com/about/data-center.php
https://www.hostpapa.com/green-web-hosting/ as well but same, buy certificates. Servers are in Toronto, not sure how is Canada about data privacy.
https://www.a2hosting.com/green-hosting they offset CO2 emissions as well, based in the US but have a server in Amsterdam as well. Reduction for non profits. -
Also any regular hosting provider should have a page today about what they do on environmental aspects. In France we use OVH : https://www.ovh.com/fr/apropos/green-it.xml.
I didn’t go through the whole directory : https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/directory/ but there are lots of options apparently…
If you are used to work with some reliable hoster, maybe at least we could investigate about what they do and communicate about it, just to say we care