DOES YOUR WEBSITE POLLUTE AS MUCH AS A JUMBO JET?

Spoiler: kind of.

One industry that's often omitted from conversations about emissions is the internet. Yes, the internet itself. As the world increases its reliance on cloud computing, continues the transition to a more robust internet of things (IOT), and focuses more heavily on big data, the internet will continue to expand at staggering rates. What makes up the internet though, and why is this a problem?

What Is the Problem?

At it's core, the internet is a global network of computers. These specially made, commercial grade computers, are called servers. Unlike our personal computers, servers are built to to handle a sustained amount of work. This additional work requires significantly more electricity to maintain. In addition to the higher power draw for the server itself, one of the most efficient ways to house a server is with other servers, in the same geographical location. This is known as a data center.

While data centers are more efficient for sending and recieving large amounts of data, housing all those servers under one roof comes at a cost: heat. Just like a crowded room of people, there is a lot of heat generated by servers packed tightly into a small space. In order to protect the servers from this heat, robust HVAC systems have to be installed and maintained at data centers. In fact, HVAC systems typically account for half of the energy used by a data center!

Due to these high power demands, data centers currently account for 2% of the world's carbon emissions. That's as much as the entire airline industry! As mentioned at the outset, our reliance on the internet continues to increase by the hour. That means more data centers, and more electricity used. At the current rate of expansion, global data center pollution is expected to over take the entire United States within the next 20 years!

What Can We Do?

As technology continues to improve, efficiency gains will be made to reduce the amount of electricity used by servers and HVAC systems, but at the rate data centers are being expanded, that likely won't make too big of an impact. The best way to solve this problem is to generate electricity in a more sustainable manner. Thankfully, this is a realistic proposition.

While sustainable electricity generation is currently still out of reach for most, a clever solution has been thought up for how we can approach this problem, specifically in the internet arena. That is why we have partnered with GreenGeeks.

GreenGeeks is a world class hosting service that aims to transition the world to a green internet. They do this by having their energy usage indepentantly audited on an annual basis. They then purchase renewable energy credits (REC) worth triple their energy costs. By purchasing these credits, their funds go directly to transitioning the electrical system to more sustainable generation methods.

Why Should We Host With You?

After all this praise of GreenGeeks, you're probably wondering where Lucalia fits into any of this. Honestly, you could host through GreenGeeks directly, and we will be first in line to thank you for helping transition the world to a more sustainable internet (though we do hope you use our referral link). However, not everybody wants to deal with their website hosting. Personally, we at Lucalia love that kind of stuff. In addition to offering managed plans that take some of the burden off of you (after all, you're in the business of running a company, not a website), we offer prices that are competitive to GreenGeeks itself.

Green website hosting is not the only thing Lucalia does to strive for environmental excellence. Check out what we stand for to learn more about what we do.

You've Convinced Us, What Next?

We're glad to hear it! Below you'll see our hosting plans and pricing. If you like what you see, or have any questions, feel free to contact us, we'd love to talk!

Basic

Our basic plan provides you with the same control as any other hosting service.

  • You get a private hosting account on our eco friendly servers
  • Lucalia will provide a custom badge to be used on your website

Starting at

$9.99/month

$99.99/year

Advanced

Don't know the first thing about about managing a server?

Includes Basic package perks, plus:

  • Lucalia will migrate your website to our servers
  • We take care of monthly security updates for your site

Starting at

$29.99/month

$299.99/year

Premier

Do you prefer a more hands-off approach? Let us take care of everything!

Includes Advanced package perks, plus:

  • Email concierge service with up to one hour of website updates included

Starting at

$49.99/month

$499.99/year