Eco Friendly Hosting $3.75/mo.

With Earth Day right around the corner, you might be wincing at the idea of paying a web host that uses electricity from a coal fired power plant to run the server that hosts your blog or website. Then, to add insult to injury, it draws more coal burning electricity to cool the server racks so the circuitry doesn’t melt down. Something just doesn’t feel right, especially if your mission involves being kind to the Earth and its residents.

No need to compromise your values when you can get eco-friendly hosting services for under $4 a month. Why, those inconsiderate global warmers probably charge more than that!

The service you are looking for is called Dotster. It’s a company with a catchy name and a great value in domains and web hosting services. Can you believe that basic web hosting is just $3.75 a month? Would you further believe that Dotster has an entire eco-friendly agenda? Let’s take a look at their green hosting program and then see how much you can get for so little money.

The reality of business is that not every location has room for those huge windmills that generate massive amounts of power at competitive rates. But, every business can buy their power from alternative energy sources if they wish. That’s what Dotster does. They purchase enough renewable energy credits to offset 150% of the energy it takes to run their hosting services. That’s half again as much as they’d need to just to claim green hosting. Those credits come from Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) that restores watersheds, puts solar panels on schools and builds small scale solar and wind projects.

The model is that if you can’t generate or use power directly from wind or solar feeding your location, then pay to build those resources elsewhere so they can feed the grid and displace dirty generation facilities. If every business did this, we’d be awash in clean energy and be busy recycling fossil fuel generation equipment for other purposes.

Dotster goes beyond just paying for green power. They actively work to reduce the power they consume by upgrading their hosting infrastructure with high efficiency servers. That’s a double win because every kilowatt not used is a kilowatt that doesn’t need a generator at all. On top of every thing else, Dotster will plant a tree for you when you buy a hosting package. Those trees come from Trees for the Future, which as a 2012 action plan to plant over 17 million trees. Yours could be one of them!

Now, let’s see what this incredibly affordable hosting service really gives you for your $3.75 a month. First of all, you get Linux hosting, the industry standard, with 10 GB of website disk space and 300 GB of bandwidth. There are few websites, indeed, that can blow through that much storage and bandwidth for a single domain. That’s what this plan is tailored for. It’s for hosting one domain, be it a website, blog, or some combination of the two. Note that you can have unlimited subdomains if you wish to subdivide your domain into smaller units.

You also get 100 email accounts, 5 FTP logins, 10 MySQL Databases, and a SiteBuilder that lets you easily create a website with up to 15 pages using your only your web browser. Yes, the server runs PHP5 and Perl/Python, with free applications that include WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, PHPMyChat, Classifieds, Post-Nuke, TikiWiki and a bunch of others.

As of this writing, Dotster is also offering a free domain name for a year with any of the hosting plans. Look for the grey offer box on the Linux Hosting or Windows Hosting pages. Windows hosting? Yes, you can also get Windows hosting for a little more money ($4.75 a month) if that’s what you would prefer. Both Linux and Windows hosting are available with larger resources that scale to unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space if you really need that much.

Is there any reason to go with some smoke belching legacy hosting service when you can get eco-friendly webhosting that you can be proud of at such a great price? Well, what are you waiting for? Learn more and get your eco friendly hosting for $3.75 a month right now. You can lock in for 1, 2 or 3 years to know in advance how much your hosting budget will be down the road.

Dotster Eco-Friendly Hosting Commitment

Anyone doing business on the Internet in the last 10 years has heard of Dotster, and the Dotster family of companies including Domain.com. When you think of Dotster, you probably think of domain name registration services. Dotster is also a hosting company offering everything from basic email hosing service for under a dollar a month all the way up to enterprise level website hosting. What I’ll bet you didn’t know is that Dotster is a major player in the realm of eco-friendly hosting.


Eco-Friendly or “green” hosting is growing in popularity among individuals and organizations that want to contribute to a better environment. The conventional wisdom is that green means more expensive when the term is applied to just about anything. That’s not true anymore. You can have Dotster eco-friendly hosting for just $5.75 a month with no long term commitment. Sign up for longer term plans and it gets even cheaper.

Dotster has a multifaceted approach to their eco-friendly hosting initiative. It starts with buying wind energy to power their web hosting servers. What they do is purchase enough renewable energy credits to offset all the power used for their hosting and even more. The commitment is 150% renewable energy offset for all Dotster web hosting servers.

Dotster buys its renewable energy credits from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, a Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit organization. The revenues they receive from selling their BEF carbon offsets or renewable energy credits is used to support building new renewable energy projects that include solar, wind and biomass power sources. Socially responsible companies and individuals can both buy these energy credits from various organizations nationwide who fund sustainable energy projects.

Substituting wind energy for coal, natural gas or even nuclear power is a good idea. An even better idea is to find ways to use less energy to get the same job done. Dotster does this by constantly upgrading their hosting infrastructure to improve both reliability and energy efficiency. They buy less power, which reduces the amount they have to charge their customers. Less power means less demand from the grid, so that those new wind generators can handle other loads and further reduce the need for carbon-based energy sources.

This attitude of ecologically responsible behavior is infused throughout the Dotster corporate culture. They donate their used computer equipment to programs for recycling and technology education for the disadvantaged rather than dumping it in a landfill to slowly leach out toxic substances. The office staff is encouraged to reduce printing, use paperless billing, recycle batteries and ditch paper cups in favor of Dotster reusable bottles.

As the icing on the cake, Dotster will plant a tree for you when you become a new Dotster web hosting company. The trees come from Trees for the Future, an organization dedicated to sustainable agroforestry that has already planted 50 million trees worldwide.

If you are on the lookout for web hosting that is more in tune with your personal philosophy as well as reliable, feature rich and an excellent deal, take a closer look at Dotster.com Web Hosting and Domain Name Registration services.

The Rose Is On The Bloom

This week, Bloom Energy unveiled its “Energy Server” fuel cell as a significant contribution to the green energy & energy independence movements. It’s perhaps the first bloom of spring, as well as a major blooming of alternative energy technology. Aside from the obvious play on words with the company’s name, just how much of a “bloom” will this development prove to be?

While it is too early to tell for sure, my guess is that Bloom Energy’s electricity generators will mature into either a valuable component of energy production and management or perhaps a game-changing invention that will transform our relationship with energy.

The Bloom Energy Server started out as a NASA research project to make air and fuel from electricity for future expeditions to Mars. When that project ended, Dr. KR Sridhar and his team noted that the technology could also be run in reverse to produce electricity from air and fuel. It took them 5 years to create their first working prototype and another couple of years to scale it up to commercial power levels of 100 KW. The Energy Server can now be considered a production product with installations at Google, Ebay and other major corporations.

So, how does this device work and what makes it better than other green energy solutions? The Bloom Energy Server is what is called a high temperature fuel cell. A fuel cell converts hydrocarbon fuel plus oxygen into water and electricity. We first started hearing about this technology during the Apollo Moon program when NASA put fuel cells on-board their spacecraft to generate electricity. What’s different about the Bloom invention is that it uses a ceramic plate as a dielectric with proprietary ink coatings on each side to create the chemical reactions. Each plate, which you can hold in your hand, generates about 1 KW of electricity. Stack them together in modules and you can scale that up to 10 KW to power a home or 100 KW to power a small business.



What fuels this fuel cell? In this case, natural gas right out of the utility pipe. It can also run on landfill methane or other bio-gases that happen to be available. The oxygen source is plain old air. The fuel cell generates heat and steam during operation, which are needed to sustain the reaction. There is also a relatively small amount of CO2 released as a byproduct, but less than you’d get by burning the gas. In fact, this process is less polluting and more energy efficient than running a gas turbine to turn a generator.

I guess you might think of this as a solid state gas turbine generator, minus the noise and exhaust. That makes it a good candidate to replace engine-based backup generators for residences and businesses. Right now the price is too high for home use. But it has something like a 3 year payback for business use as an alternative energy source, not just for backup power. That’s impressive, when you remember that this product is just rolling out in limited production. As it follows the learning curve for any new technology, prices will come down as quantities go up. There will also be many more models of Bloom Energy Servers available, with both higher and lower power levels available.

If this was nothing more than just another way to turn natural gas into electricity, it would still be an important development. But being a clean, quiet device that can be installed right next to a building with about the same look and footprint as a large electrical transformer, it offers an opportunity to distribute power production farther and wider than ever before. If the price comes down to a one year payoff or better, there will be mad scramble by every medium and large business to install these systems on their property.

We thought that was going to happen with solar panels, but the cost and variable nature of solar power has stunted the adoption of solar. Google, one of the Bloom Energy Server users, has previously deployed massive arrays of solar panels. But these installations are still rare enough to be notable in the U.S. Wind energy has enjoyed more popularity, but wind also suffers from variable output levels depending on how the breezes blow.

Nay sayers to the green energy movement point at these limitations to pooh-pooh the whole idea of abandoning traditional hydrocarbon fuels. But this is too limited a view. The right solution is not going to be a single killer-app like fusion. It’s far more likely to be a systems approach using all sorts of technologies managed by a smart grid that takes energy from where it is available and delivers it to where it is needed. For instance, solar is well suited to provide peak air conditioning needs. After all, when do you run an air conditioner the hardest? It’s when the sun in beating down mid-day in summer. That’s exactly when solar panels produce their highest power outputs.

There is talk that a really smart grid could even tap into millions of electric cars sitting in their garages to provide power smoothing for the grid by quickly supplying or absorbing small amounts of electricity each. The Bloom Energy Server might also serve this function on a commercial scale. Imagine if each company had a Bloom unit outside and an array of solar panels on the room. Our poor teetering energy grid would have a much easier job and there might be enough excess capacity to start shutting down obsolete coal fired generators.

Of course, there is still a need for baseload power, which is beyond the capability of any alternative sources right now. That argues for additional nuclear plants to curb carbon dioxide emissions. Bloom Energy Servers, in mass quantities, might also provide baseload power. However, there’s a real question of how much natural gas reserves we’ll have if we start using gas to replace coal on a major scale. There’s also some level of CO2 release inherent with any fossil fuel to electricity conversion.

What we really don’t know yet is how well we can do if we go after energy independence and green energy in a big way. We can’t say that we’ve really tried until you look around and see solar panels on every roof and windmills in every field and hear your neighbors bragging about how much money they make selling electricity to the grid. Hey, we got to the moon in less than 10 years with fuel cells. How fast can we solve our energy issues with wind, solar and fuel cells if we really put our hearts into it?

Even If There Is No Global Warming

Global warming is heating up. Regardless of what the atmosphere is doing at the moment, the rhetoric on climate change is getting hot and proponents on both sides of the issue are getting really hot... under the collar. The irony is that green energy makes sense regardless of whether we’re about to boil over or freeze our toes off.

To be sure, the consensus among the most respected scientific minds worldwide is that the average temperature of the planet is increasing and our industrial age emissions of carbon dioxide are causing it. But for the sake of discussion, let’s say it isn’t so. Let’s say that we’re just riding natural changes in the climate that are driven by subtle variations in the sun’s energy output, wobbles in the Earth’s orbit, a rash of volcanic eruptions or whatever. What if any or all of these influences are really what we’re observing?

The best answer might be: “So what?”

There are really good reasons for us to behave like CO2 is bringing disaster upon our heads, regardless of the scientific connection. We need to change our relationship with energy or disaster will come down upon us and likely sooner rather than later. In fact, we could be in deep trouble long before Florida slips below the waves and it will have nothing to do with carbon-anything.

We are currently in the midst of one nasty recession that has had the side effect of buying us valuable time on both the climate and energy fronts. All those tankers parked in the Persian Gulf and the dearth of oil exploration are evidence that we’re not consuming energy, especially oil energy, at anything like the rate we expected a few years ago. Before people started throwing punches over global warming, the big fight was over peak oil. That’s the prediction that we’re draining old oil wells faster than we’re finding new ones to replace them. The forecaster was M. King Hubbert, a Shell Oil researcher, who had the gall to announce in 1957 that U.S. oil production would peak in the late 60’s to early 70’s. A lot of well meaning dissenters thought he was nuts until, right on schedule, our production topped out in 1970.

Well, guess what? There is also a peak oil prediction for global oil production. By some expectations we should have already passed it. Most likely we’ve been spared by those nasty recessions that followed the bursting of the tech bubble and now the housing bubble. It’s just a short term reprieve, however. As soon as business starts kicking back into high gear we’re going to realize that we’re strapped for oil and those $4 and $5 a gallon gas prices will be back in no time. Perhaps worse, as we’re doing nothing to increase the supply at the moment.

To be sure, we’re not on the verge of running out of oil anytime soon. What we’re on the verge of is running out of the cheap, sweet, light crude that we’ve all come to know and love. Half of it is still in the ground, but there are a lot more of us who want it and the price is going to spiral upward as we try to outbid and perhaps out shoot each other to get it. What’s in plentiful supply are the gooey tar sands and other thick sulfur-laden muck that cost a fortune to turn into the nice sweet light gasoline and diesel that won’t clog up your injectors.

The choice we’re facing is to persist in slugging it out over the remaining oil reserves and keep coming up with more and more money to get it one way or the other, or break the cycle by moving off oil and onto something more promising before the situation is totally hopeless. That something is green energy. A generation ago, solar panels and wind generators were scientific curiosities that only made economic sense in unique situations. Now they’re in mass production with costs that can be easily be paid back within the lifetime of the equipment. Are green sources as cost effective as coal, oil and natural gas? Wind is almost at parity, with solar not that far behind. We haven’t even started to tap wave and tidal energy for coastal cities, nor geothermal for areas where it’s boiling hot close to the surface.

Even if all we do is keep squabbling, the production learning curve will continue to reduce the cost of green energy until it becomes the obvious choice. Wouldn’t it be smarter to embrace the change now and gain the advantages sooner? Green energy gives us an unlimited source of power with energy that is naturally provided by the Sun (solar and wind) and the Moon (tidal). There’s no worry about investing in “dry holes.” It gives us national security in that no other country can take away our sunshine and breezes. Any money we invest in the generating equipment and maintenance, we could be paying to ourselves. That’s domestic security, a reduction in the portion of our national debt that comes from paying for foreign oil, and employment that is easy to keep on-shore.

Green technology and manufacturing practices also give us efficiency improvements that result in less energy needed for a given process and lower costs through recycling, rather than always starting with mining raw minerals and ending with paying to bury perfectly good processed materials when we’re done with the product.

Green energy production and green product technology complement each other. From an efficiency standpoint, they “pull in the same direction” and accelerate the cost and supply advantages we’d gain over industrial-age technologies based on fossil fuels. It’s a win-win situation and, if we’re smart about it, we’ll be the winners.

The Green Energy Fairy Tale is Real

How many decades have we been treated to a magical fairy tale of the future, where fantastic power sources like solar, wind, tidal, wave motion and maybe fusion will create a second Eden for us? It would be a world where unlimited energy provides a picture-perfect environment. Oh, but that’s not for now. Today we need wallow in the dirty world of coal and oil because those technologies are all that are practical with the technology we have at hand.

Every time I hear that, I have to look around to see if we are all dressed like characters in a Dickens novel. Are you kidding, Scrooge? We could rid ourselves of dirty energy right now... if we wanted to.

The problem is that we are living in a fog of our own making. I’m not talking about the haze that settles over Los Angeles and other major cities around the world due to air pollution. I’m talking about a mental fog that we can’t see our way clear of. Like many myths, it’s so ingrained and potent that we believe it with all our hearts and souls. The problem is that it’s just plain wrong.

Remember the Apollo Moon program? I do. As a kid, I liked to watch the rockets blow up every time they tried to launch one in the late 50’s and early 60’s. Then President Kennedy said we were going to the Moon and come back safely within the decade. So, we did.

Clean energy is a far more mature technology today than rocketry was in my youth. Everything you need to power your home or business from solar or wind energy is an off-the-shelf item with a manufacturer’s warranty. Hybrid cars with double the MPG ratings of their non-hybird equivalents are sitting in show rooms, shined up and ready to drive off the lot.

Oh, but those are just toys for people who are willing to pay through the nose to be early adopters. Aren’t they? No, Scrooge, this stuff is mainstream now. In nearly all locations there is enough sunlight that you can make your electric meter run backwards with just the spread of solar panels that will cover the roof of your house. I just saw a wind generator on sale at one of the big box hardware stores. My Camry Hybrid routinely gets twice the milage of my previous Olds Cutlass Supreme and offers the same power and even more cabin room.

What’s wrong here is that there is no national fervor yet for energy independence nor slowing climate change. If there was, what would it look like? Let’s try to see an alternative dream.

This is a dream where every home has a roof made of solar panels and an inverter connected to the power grid. You don’t buy electricity any more, you sell it. Your electric bill is zero. Every flat roof of a commercial, government, school, or hospital building is also beset with solar panels. They’re often hard to see from the ground, but from the air it’s one great sea of power panels. Out in the country, every farm has at least one windmill that provides a secure income for the farm families regardless of what crop prices are doing. A barn roof full of solar panels adds to that residual income and powers the farm.

This mass adoption on on-site power generation means those dirty coal plants can just be shut down or converted to natural gas peaker plants that run only as needed to supplement the green energy sources. Nuclear plants provide a reliable base load capability with no realistic threat of poisoning the public. Our one domestic close call was the Three Mile Island accident 30 years ago where nobody was hurt. But it spooked us so badly that we’ve shunned nukes ever since. About 40,000 people are killed in traffic accidents per year or about 1,200,000 dead in the 30 years since Three Mile Island and yet there’s no outcry to shun cars. See how powerful these mental fogs are?

The President and other world leaders are seriously considering another round of nuclear weapons reductions. So do we just chop those warheads up and hide the radioactive parts inside a mountain in Nevada? No way. There’s our bridge fuel to make the switch from dirty to clean energy. When we’ve transitioned, we can reprocess the rods until they are nearly non-radioactive and stow what’s left for future generations to learn how to harness.

We use about 9 million barrels per day of oil for gasoline. If we simply doubled the mileage of our vehicles by switching to those hybrids that are ready to go, we could cut that to 4.5 million, which is less than the 5 million barrels per day that we produce in the U.S. That’s energy security, plus we’d cut the greenhouse gas contribution from cars in half. The next generation of plug-in hybrids and electric cars will use even less in the way of liquid hydrocarbon fuels and will create only a pittance of greenhouse gasses if we are smart enough to generate the electricity from sunlight, wind, and nuclear.

That’s not all of the oil we use, but by what insanity are we still burning oil other than for transportation? A crash program to convert all oil fueled generating stations to natural gas and switch the Northeastern U.S. from heating oil to natural gas and/or electric would get rid of the need to scratch around for new oil wells and dramatically cut greenhouse emissions. This conversion project would be a good use for current and future national infrastructure investments. We’re talking a jobs program at a time of record unemployment, an efficiency improvement that will save business and residential users money on their heating bills, and a major reduction in pollution and global warming emissions.

So, do we put on our Victorian attire and pretend we’re still living in the 19th century or do we cut through the fog that’s holding us back and demand to make alternative energy our next national passion? If we pursued green energy with the fervor that got us to the moon, we could simultaneously solve our job creation, global warming, economic security, and energy production problems. The whole new can-do 21st century attitude we’d acquire would be a bonus.

Do you think that as a nation we could be doing a much better job of converting to new energy resources to stem the accelerating rate of climate change that is upon us? If so, you’ll find many more inspiring posts to read on Blog Action Day 2009 - Climate Change on Thursday, October 15. Visit www.blogactionday.org for suggestions on how you, too, can participate.

At T1 Rex's Business Telecom Explainer, we’re blogging on the subject of climate change the entire week. You may also enjoy reading our kick-off post, “Blog Action Day For A Less Toasty Tomorrow.”