To understand where the Web’s power comes from and how it gets to our servers, let’s first talk about some challenges that existing electrical grids pose. Many of them are more than 100 years old, created at a time when electricity needs were simple. They also don’t differentiate between power generated by a wind farm, a hydroelectric dam, a solar array, a nuclear plant, oil, or a coal-powered electrical plant. Electricity from all sources goes into the grid and mixes together, making it virtually impossible to know whether the energy that ends up at your home or business came from clean, renewable sources or fossil fuels.

This poses challenges for consumers or companies that want to commit to renewable energy. Currently there are only a handful of options. Here are some of the ways in which companies use market-based solutions to procure renewable energy:^[100]

The preceding five examples overly simplify a complicated landscape for powering your digital products and services with renewable energy. The reality is much more complex. Policy changes are still required in many markets to make renewable energy a reality. Also, hosting providers, data centers, and other companies will not aggressively pursue options for renewable energy in their market unless they know there is consumer demand for it.

To complicate things even further, marketers often rely on the complexity of this situation to claim 100% renewable energy without putting the legwork into actually achieving it. Few consumers will challenge such a claim. Making said claim is not as simple as buying unbundled RECs and stating that you are powered by 100% renewable energy, though in many markets there are few other options. One hosting provider even claims in its marketing materials that it plants a tree for every new account, which is wonderful, but doesn’t move us closer to an Internet powered by renewable energy. All this further confuses an already overwhelmed consumer base. It is no wonder that clean energy is rarely part of the decision-making process when web teams review where to host their applications.

Given the complicated landscape of powering servers with renewable energy, what’s an acceptable solution?

Shawn Mills of B Corp Green House Data says, “It’s largely unreasonable to expect a data center to purchase direct renewable energy, so RECs are a good way to encourage growth in the sector. Through them, we are able to certify that the amount of energy consumed by our data centers has an equivalent amount of renewable energy added to the grid.”

David Pomerantz of Greenpeace doesn’t necessarily agree, because RECs can be unbundled from the electricity that produced them, which can be problematic. He notes that because the market has driven RECs prices so low they often end up not contributing to production of more clean energy, which is what really helps directly address the problem of climate change. “If you’re paying for the electricity along with the RECs,” he says, “it’s a viable solution. But if you’re just buying the RECs alone, you’re not actually improving the situation. Companies that purchase RECs and not the electricity that comes with them are, in effect, just buying PR.”

“In some ways, [RECs] have made the rapid growth of clean energy possible, and used correctly, they can be advantageous,” said Green America’s Todd Larsen. “At the same time, RECs can be problematic and actually work against creating local, truly green sources of energy.”

One of the biggest challenges with RECs, Todd notes, is that all forms of green energy, including the direct purchase of renewable energy from a local provider and RECs—which can be green energy certificates that support a mix of truly clean energy and less green technologies, and can be purchased for energy that would have been produced absent the REC—are often valued equally, when they should not be.

Rob Stevens of ClimateCare, a B Corp based in the United Kingdom that has improved the lives of more than 6 million people and reduced 16.5 million tons of CO₂, notes that there are similar challenges in Europe. “Guarantees of origin, or GOOs, are related to laws which oblige energy providers to get 20% of their energy production from renewable sources,” he says. “The market is based on legislation and compliance. Corporations can buy GOOs in Europe to demonstrate that purchased electricity comes from renewable sources. Interest in this is growing, but complicated actions can stifle corporate involvement. It is important to keep communication around this simple and engaging.”

David’s advice to people vetting hosting providers is that “as a general rule, if they’re not talking about their energy supply, they are likely just using RECs.”

David, Todd, Rob, and Shawn all agree that transparency and putting the extra effort to not take the easy road (in this case, unbundled RECs) will go a long way in all sustainability efforts, but especially in sourcing renewable power.

“We specifically purchase wind energy RECs that go toward production of local projects,” Shawn says. “RECs can be used to directly fund wind turbine construction, for example. Energy companies can apply to receive funds from RECs and use them for the design, construction, or ongoing operation of a renewable energy production facility.”

Green House Data chose fellow B Corp Renewable Choice because it is a well-established broker with a history of successful investment in renewable energy across the United States, where Green House Data is located. It added some RECs from WyoREC to support REC development in its hometown of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Renewable Choice does projects in the region, but this was a new local venture. “EPA recognition is also vital for us,” Shawn says, “as we are an EPA Green Power Partner. The RECs have to be tracked in order for us to feel comfortable that their funds are going towards legitimate projects.”

For many companies, RECs might be the only affordable option. “In that case,” David says, “buy the highest quality RECs you can. Get engaged with the local utility. Push your suppliers. Take the high road. This is an area where smaller companies can hopefully get resources through organizations like B Lab and Green America.”

For companies that own and operate their own data centers, Greenpeace expects them to advocate for greater renewable energy supply, and for greater access to renewable energy. That could be with federal policymakers, state policymakers, state regulators (like public utility commissions), and directly with the utilities themselves.

“Companies who do not own their own data centers don’t have as direct a relationship with the utility,” David says, “which makes that a bit more challenging. They can and absolutely should engage in political advocacy for renewable energy if they are committed to moving their operations in that direction. But we encourage them to leverage relationships where they’ll have the highest impact, and that’s often with their vendors. So if their company’s data is hosted by a third-party cloud provider, or in a colocation data center, we encourage them to advocate with those parties to offer them renewable energy options, to improve their transparency, to do their own advocacy up the line, and so on.”

David offers other advice, as well: customers of any of these companies can and should communicate their desire for a green, renewably powered Internet. They can also do their best to power their own homes and footprints with renewable energy, and like everyone else involved, register their voice with policymakers so that it becomes easier for them to go green, too.

Companies that create digital products and services are in a unique position to advocate for green hosting that is powered by renewable energy while also offering the same simplicity, uptime, commitment to customer service, and quality that their fossil fuel–powered counterparts do. Of course, this goes hand in hand with what your resources allow. When I moved my personal blog from a provider that had hosted it for nearly five years, I told the company owner that I needed to house it with a provider that uses renewable energy. He said he didn’t know that was even an option and mentioned he would look into it. I sent him some links. Sometimes, it’s as simple as having a conversation, something all designers and developers could easily have with their providers.

“Widespread renewable energy will be the single biggest game changer for this sector,” says Shawn. “If we can get everything on renewables, any energy wasted from inefficiencies has less of an impact.

“From there we can work on getting all the tiny data centers scattered across the globe into better operational shape. Those are the real drains on resources—there are little 5,000-square-foot facilities that probably have a comparable carbon footprint to one of Google’s 100,000-square-foot buildings, just because of outdated design, equipment, and management.”

There is room for other companies, including smaller hosting providers like AISO.NET and others, to be leaders in this area alongside the big players that might have more resources. Their customers—like designers, developers, and web teams—can help them by making it known that there is interest in reliable, efficient hosting powered by 100% renewable energy.

Data centers or hosting providers that currently wish to generate their own renewable energy will find themselves taking on a serious commitment of time and money, something that might be out of reach for many smaller companies that want to provide green hosting but don’t necessarily have the resources to do so. Though pricing for solar is coming down, powering your data centers using renewable energy requires investments in hardware that needs to be maintained and/or upgraded. In many markets, it also means trudging through regulatory red tape and crossing legislative hurdles before you can even begin the planning process. Putting a solar array on your rooftop or a windmill in the parking lot, however, also guarantees that you are getting energy from a local, renewable source. Because the source of your power is nearby, it can also mitigate transmission loss that comes with using the grid.

Renewable energy can be installed with or without access to the larger electrical grid:

A microgrid does not rely on grid power at all. This small-scale power grid can operate independently or in conjunction with the area’s main electrical grid. Any small-scale localized station with its own power resources, generation and loads, and definable boundaries qualifies as a microgrid. This is not often realistic for data centers, which require large amounts of electricity. Plus, because reliable access to data is critical to their business model, a data center that relies on a micro-grid would also require a reliable backup power supply, which is likely attached to the grid.

Data center wind farms or solar arrays can also contribute power back to the primary electrical grid, which can then be used by customers of that grid. Regulations on how you are compensated for the energy you supply the grid vary from market to market.

Winnipeg-based Canadian B Corp and web design firm Manoverboard noted in its Green Web Hosting whitepaper,^[101] “Even for most data centers with on-site or off-site renewable energy, the center maintains a tie to the local electricity grid and the power its equipment uses is from these grid-fueled power plants. This local electricity mix can rely heavily on fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases (GHGs).”

Why does this matter? Because where you host your digital product or service makes a difference. It can be challenging to find quality sustainable solutions, but those seemingly small decisions can add up. There is a common question asked by B Lab, the organization that certifies B Corps: “How do you tell the difference between a good company and just good marketing?”

For green hosting providers, the answer lies in transparency about where their energy comes from and how they get it. “Whatever angle on sustainability a company chooses, it should be transparent and honest in what it is doing, who it is benefiting, and it should of course mean something to the consumer,” says Canvas Host’s David Anderson.

Figure 3-2. What is the difference between a good company and just good marketing?

Canvas Host developed “meaningful metrics” to use in its own program. “For us, we wanted to not only offset our energy consumption, we wanted to measure it to demonstrate ongoing progress,” David says. The company established these three metrics for its sustainability program:

“It’s simply incredible how far this has come,” David says. “And yet, the story is still evolving.”

Sustainability initiatives also must be balanced with reliable service. All the wind power in the world won’t make a difference if a company’s servers consistently go down or they haven’t committed to a stellar customer service experience. People will flock away from them in droves.

Andrew Boardman from Manoverboard, had this exact thing happen when one of his clients who cared very much about sustainability chose not to go with a green provider. “We reviewed the various options available, including using a relatively new green hosting vendor, staying put, or moving the site to a highly reputable data provider with no sustainability policy,” Andrew says. “When we got to the other side of the tracks, together we chose the latter—performance and support won over renewables and e-waste. I think we were all a bit disappointed, but no one was prepared to risk a very valuable project with a smaller, newer data provider—green or not. The client can use renewable energy credits to offset their choice of a nongreen provider.”

The best web hosts offer the complete package: great, feature-rich hosting at competitive prices, excellent customer service, and servers that run on renewable energy. Unicorns, in other words.

We will cover green hosting barriers, workarounds, and unicorns later in the chapter. Green hosting is only one sustainable component in a list of many. Let’s explore some of the others.

Many projects focus on extensive (and often unnecessary) front-loaded scoping and specification documentation, much of which is tossed as new project requirements are learned throughout each phase of execution. This phase-based, requirements-heavy approach, which frequently requires that one phase be completed before beginning another is typically referred to as a waterfall method. Problem is, this approach doesn’t always account for new ideas that come up as the project progresses. Changes in scope or definition of a project can have profound effects on how the final deliverables are received by end users. Wasted efforts or miscommunication that can happen in the translation between extensive specifications created up front and actual tasks during project execution can result in mismanaged resources, which affect not only the company’s financial bottom line, but its impact on people and the planet, as well. Let’s explore what this means.

With a waterfall-based approach, teams with different specialties work in silos, rarely collaborating with other teams. Sets of deliverables are lobbed over a (figurative) wall to be completed by the next team. Waterfall projects can promote waste in several ways:

Related to waterfall is what is referred to as the cone of uncertainty, which purports that unknowns at the beginning of any project require that estimates to execute the project be as much as four times higher than one might expect. As a project progresses, it has a diminishing range of uncertainty. Because budgets and timelines in waterfall projects are based on specific deliverables, clients write exhaustive requests for proposals (RFPs) that outline as many project variables as possible. Web firms (or any service provider working on large projects, for that matter) negotiate in a time- and resource-intensive process that generally yields inaccurate results because the bidding agency often quotes high to account for the cone of uncertainty. The cone of uncertainty concept originated pre-Internet, in 1950s engineering and construction management, but it definitely applies to today’s web projects. Of course, not every waterfall project succumbs to these potential pitfalls, but many do.

Alternatively, what if there were a way to get projects done faster and potentially cheaper? Wouldn’t that tend to be a more sustainable choice?

Figure 3-4. Estimates at the beginning of a project are considerably more than at the end because as a project moves toward the deadline, specific deliverables become known

A 21st-century solution to the problems of assembly-line waterfall methods, Agile promotes collaboration over documentation. It values continued learning and embraces conflict. It focuses on delivering the highest-value features first. All of this can result in resources being managed more effectively.

There are many variations of Agile across industries (Scrum, Lean, extreme programming, pair development, Kanban, etc.) each with its own unique variation on what is essentially an interactive and collaborative process for producing projects (or products) faster with fewer resources. Though similar systems were developed for manufacturing as far back as 1948,^[103] it wasn’t until the publication of The Agile Manifesto in 2001 that Agile methods came into their own for the software development industry. Today, agility concepts are applicable across a wide array of industries, markets, and processes. In the world of digital products and services, Agile methods are seeing a steady rise in adoption rates across startups and digital agencies.

“One of the things I love most about Agile is that we’re constantly learning and asking questions about it,” says Lime Red’s Emily Lonigro-Boylan. “Once a client said in a retro (the meeting at the end of a two-week building period called a Sprint): “You mean I talk about what went wrong now? I don’t wait until the end of the project?” My team said “Yeah! Of course we want to be able to fix any issues now, not wait!” Being agile means you’re aware of the minutiae of the project and the overall goal at the same time.” Emily notes that her clients and team working seamlessly is what makes their projects work. “Whenever they need to make a quick decision, they’ve built the rapport and trust to do it. It’s amazing to watch. I can’t believe we ever did it any other way.”

There are a few things that make Agile methodologies potentially more sustainable than their waterfall counterparts:

The Lean Startup movement is an example of agile methods reshaping how businesses bring products to market, letting them focus only on the minimum number of features a product needs to be considered functional, also known as a minimum viable product (MVP). By not adhering to the “more is more” philosophy of application design and development, practitioners of agile methods, including those in the Lean Startup community, create more useful products and services with less waste.

While a deep dive into Agile methods is beyond the scope of this book, the following resources cover both Agile software methods and organizational agility:

It’s hard to invest in a solution if you don’t know whether it will be around in a few years. This has been an ongoing challenge in the software industry for decades. Programming languages—whether proprietary or open source—are replaced, improved upon, or support is discontinued. Finding a developer who knows a proprietary legacy system can be time consuming and costly. Conversely, it is sometimes easier (and potentially more cost effective) to find a designer or developer familiar with open source tools.

Thousands of people maintain the most popular open source projects, for example. Although bugs or security vulnerabilities in open source projects can be exploited by hackers, there are also significant efforts afoot to ensure those things don’t happen again.

“People should think about open source like free kittens,” says Mike Gifford. “They are amazing, but if you don’t take care of them, they can be hell.”

The movement itself has run into challenges in being self-sustaining, as well. According to the Technology Innovation Management Review:^[104]

It is encouraging to see larger companies like Facebook embracing open source principles and practices. Coupled with better licensing practices, this can give the open source movement the progress it needs to be more sustainable for the long term.

It is possible for an open source project to become inefficient or fragmented as a result of there being too many contributors. But it’s also possible for open source platforms to address challenges like resource utilization, excess capacity, diversity, scaling, innovation, exponential learning, and yes, even saving the planet.

In a 2015 presentation at Linuxcon, Zipcar founder Robin Chase noted, “Industrial capitalism is dead because the Internet exists and sharing is a better way of extracting more value.”^[105] Bold claims. Zipcar and Airbnb were examples she gave of open source collaboration defying the laws of physics: “We can build the largest hotel chain in the world with Airbnb in just four years.” Tesla, creators of popular electric cars, also plans to embrace open source solutions. Although it remains to be seen whether Airbnb will save the planet, Chase does bring up a good point that open source platforms offer opportunities to redistribute wealth and change entire industries without incurring the planet-damaging overhead that would come with, for example, actually building the world’s largest hotel chain. Chase also highlighted that shared network assets deliver more value than closed assets and just as open collaboration often yields superior results to closed or proprietary solutions due to the sheer number of people collaborating on an idea.

GitHub, for example, has more than 30.7 million code repositories uploaded by its users for all to share and alter.^[106] The company, which began as a weekend project, has been evaluated at $750 million and adds about 10,000 new users on average every weekday.^[107] The White House, Facebook, Amazon, and LinkedIn all use it for various projects, as do about 12.1 million others. It offers a vast resource for developers to test out new ideas and find resources for their projects.

This is important to consider as we weigh the sustainability pros and cons of the applications we build. More users can mean more environmental impact on the backend and frontend of the applications themselves, but conversely, distributed collaboration offers ways to accomplish tasks with fewer dependencies and bottlenecks, making it possible for us to build applications via a process which is in and of itself more sustainable.

By far, the most common problem we experienced when working with these companies was reliability in site uptime. Websites went offline unexpectedly and repeatedly from provider to provider.

Thomas Burns, cofounder and vice president of business development at Green House Data notes that reliability is one of his company’s highest priorities:

Figure 3-7. Stellar customer service in the face of climate change from Squarespace

Of course power sources aren’t the only thing that can bring a website offline, but it is good to see a company committing to reliability at that level.

Squarespace’s efforts to keep its 1.4 million websites online during Hurricane Sandy is a great example of one company’s commitment to reliable hosting services. During the disaster, the company got permission to carry fuel into their data center in plastic bottles to keep the servers running. Several team members stayed on site during the storm to do so if that was required. Of course, Hurricane Sandy is an extreme example, but it proves the point that green web hosting providers should focus on making server reliability one of their biggest priorities, doing whatever possible to guarantee the best possible uptime for sites on their servers.

A lack of good customer service went hand in hand in the aforementioned unreliable hosting. In a few cases, it seemed like the entire support staff was one guy poking around to fix issues in his free time, which is entirely possible for a small company. Not only were many of these companies not able to help us when websites went offline, but some also often seemed genuinely disinterested in doing so. At least twice, the responses we received were indifferent and oftentimes terse, their accompanying suggested solutions ill-conceived. One issue took more than two weeks to resolve. Another required an unexpected software add-on to the tune of significant additional monthly expenditures. We couldn’t decipher whether these support solutions were outsourced or not.

In some respects, this is understandable—growth can be a significant challenge for any small business. But it is not acceptable. If these companies want to scale—and in order to bring more sustainability to the Internet, we definitely want them to scale—they need to have nothing short of top-notch customer service: professional, responsive, and delivered by experts. They must care for their customers as much as they seemingly care for the planet.

In late 2015, we discovered by chance that many of those providers with which we had such terrible experiences over the course of the previous five years were in fact owned by a single, large public company. Someone shared with me a list from Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Hosting/wiki/eig) of web hosts owned by a company called Endurance International Group (EIG). The list contained some very familiar names: green hosting companies with which we had tried to do business over the previous five years. The post read:

As I skimmed the list, many familiar names popped out at me. I was amazed at how many companies listed were on our own “tried and failed” green hosting list. According to this post, every move to another company (which was inevitably plagued by the same service and reliability issues) was in reality owned by the same parent company. This scenario was all too painfully familiar. Could it be true?

Doing some due diligence to be certain the Reddit post wasn’t the isolated frustration of a single angry customer, I came across many other posts from frustrated EIG customers who had logged complaints about quality, reliability, and customer service. In total as of this writing, 345 complaints on the Better Business Bureau’s site alone have been logged against EIG.

I sent a query to EIG’s PR team requesting more information about their green hosting brands, but received no response. I chose not to list the hosting providers that we explored here (not all of which were part of EIG), as our experience only represents that of one small company. However, I share this story as a cautionary tale for others to do their homework when it comes to choosing a hosting provider that touts its green values. Suffice it to say, we have moved away from hosting with EIG brands.

In the United States and some other countries, public companies are legally required to maximize shareholder value. In other words, shareholders can sue company leaders if they think the company is not doing everything within its power to squeeze all potential profit out of quarterly earnings. In some cases, this can lead to gutting sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments, slashing philanthropic efforts, or making decisions that undercut workers, price gouge customers, and do extensive damage to the environment all in the spirit of unlimited growth. Variations on this story have unfolded throughout history. Perhaps a similar version plays out in the boardroom of EIG each time it discusses purchasing a new web hosting company.

Incidentally, this is also the primary reason certified B Corps and Public Benefit Corporation legislation exists: for companies that want to legally consider stakeholder needs alongside those of shareholders. A good green host, like the examples we heard earlier from Green House Data and Canvas Host, will consider all stakeholder needs in its decision-making process. A Public Benefit Corporation that considers these needs is also at less risk of being sued by shareholders for pursuing purpose alongside profit.

When you combine the small number of renewable energy–powered web hosting options available with unreliable servers and sometimes questionable customer service practices, it is no surprise that few people have shifted site hosting away from bigger, cheaper, and arguably more stable hosting providers. They offer stability and customer service for an affordable price. Unfortunately, that comes at the expense of the planet.

What the Greenpeace Clicking Clean report and our experience highlight is that a huge gap exists between the efforts of behemoth companies to minimize their online impact and what the rest of us who build or otherwise inhabit the Internet are doing to make the Web more sustainable. Mightybytes remains committed to hosting our websites on servers powered by renewable energy, and we’re not the only ones. There is a growing number of companies looking for better, more sustainable data solutions.

Andrew Boardman from Manoverboard agrees. “Although we have spent a considerable amount of time and resources on identifying a green host, we have yet to hit the trifecta: a company that is purpose-driven with great customer support and that also happens to be powered by 100% renewables. We won’t stop looking. Our business, clients, and planet depend on it. I know that when we get there, we’ll all win big.”

Although the bigger, consumer-facing players get most of the attention for their efforts transitioning to renewable energy, the rest of the Internet has some serious electricity needs, as well. What about the tens of thousands of smaller companies, nonprofits, and local governments that inhabit the less trafficked regions of the Internet? Most of these companies either rent server space in shared facilities or host their operations with cloud computing vendors and content delivery networks. How can these organizations transition to renewable energy for their data needs?

Though figures on renewable energy use of the smaller colocation companies are elusive, of those audited in Greenpeace’s 2015 report—many of which supply server space to the aforementioned types of companies—the average amount of clean energy powering their servers was barely over 14%, which is on par with renewable energy production in the United States. That number is only 13%. So clearly there is significant room for improvement as we move to a clean energy–powered Internet.

That said, progress is being made by many of the larger tech companies that have resources to invest in onsite renewables. AWS announced in its 2015 shareholder letter that the company was on track to power AWS with 40% renewable energy—up from 25% the year before—and had invested in four significant wind and solar farms that will deliver 1.6 million megawatt hours per year of additional renewable energy into the electric grids that supply AWS data centers.^[109] Considering that AWS houses as much as one-third of the Internet, that’s major.^[110]

Finally, even though buying RECs is a small step forward and in some regions the only option, unbundled RECs can do little to improve the supply of electricity directly powering a hosting provider’s servers. This is further complicated by a political climate that doesn’t support easy access to renewables and a public that is often either indifferent or doesn’t understand how to make the transition.