Website should be hosted on a data centre that is running on 100% renewable energy.
Easy to implement
13 High impact score
Not all web hosts claiming to be “green” are actually running on 100% renewable energy, many claims rest on offsetting and carbon credits rather than the electricity actually being clean at the point of use, and it’s worth checking which one you’re being sold.
Even hyperscalers with genuinely ambitious pledges illustrate why this diligence matters. Microsoft has committed to having been carbon neutral since 2012, carbon negative by 2030, offsetting all the carbon the company has ever emitted by 2050, and running on 100% renewable energy by 2025 yet its own emissions still rose by 20% (14 million tonnes of carbon) in 2021, largely driven by the pandemic, by its own Sustainability Officer’s account. Its water-replenishment commitments have also drawn criticism for replenishing water at a global level rather than necessarily back into the specific communities affected, and carbon offsetting more broadly is criticised for not addressing the underlying fact that an organisation is still producing the emissions in the first place. None of this means don’t trust green hosting claims; it means verify what’s actually backing them.