This article deviates slightly from my normal articles, but it is an important message that impacts all our lives.

I don’t see myself as an activist. I never was and I never will be. But I do believe that I do my best to make a difference within my own limitations.

Take MindMapTutor.com, or this very article, for example. It is done in the spirit of giving what I know to help as many people as possible. It is my version of ‘giving back’ what I have received in more abundance than many. I believing in giving more than I get back. In this case it is giving back to the environment.

I do charge for some services, though. So no good Samaritan labels!

A Short overview of global warming

We have all heard about the effects of Global warming and those that watched Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, started making this a moral issue. Once again, I leave that path to the activists.

Carbon dioxide and other gases naturally trap solar heat to warm the surface of our planet. This is a natural phenomenon and is required to keep our planet habitable. By burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and clearing forests at an alarming rate, we have drastically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. The amount of carbon dioxide you produce is termed your ‘carbon footprint’.

This has caused ‘global warming’. Temperatures are starting to rise. This is causing glaciers to melt, animals to leave their natural habitats and the number of droughts and floods to increase.

We can solve this problem. Some would say that we have a moral obligation to do so. This article is about how I saw an opportunity to make a difference and took the decision to do so. Even small differences to your daily life can add up to make a big difference.

MindMaptutor’s beginnings

A few years ago, I was looking for a hosting company for my new website, MindMapTutor.com. I obviously wanted something that wasn’t too expensive, but I also wanted to provide excellent service. “Uptime” and speed are very important to visitors of any sight. I simply did not trust any of the free hosting companies. (A good thing, as I heard recently that GeoCities, the free hosting services provided by Yahoo! has ended their service to website owners.)

I also had to fund my own hosting, so it definitely had to be value for money.

When evaluating various hosts, there was one factor that swung it Hostgator’s way. They were an affordable Green hosting company. But that wasn’t all. They also provided unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and 99.9% guaranteed uptime. They met all the criteria I required.

Now, in case you don’t know what a Green company is, it is a company that cares for the environment and its carbon footprint.

The IT Data Centre’s use of energy

It is a fact that IT Data Centres consume 3%-4% of all electricity with its obvious associated emissions. It uses electricity to not only power the servers, but also to cool the servers.

The energy requirements of cooling servers are not very well known. For every watt that is needed to power a server, one to two watts are needed to cool it. You need at least twice as much renewable energy if you want to power and cool your servers with renewable energy.

When I read that Hostgator is 130% green certified, I wondered, ‘What does this mean?”

Renewable Energy Credits (RECs)

RECs allow you to offset your power usage against renewable energy resources by purchasing credits in a renewable source. If the renewable source puts this energy into the grid and you take energy out of the grid, (even if you are not in the same region as the renewable source), your net effect can be one of creating renewable energy versus consuming traditional energy. You could therefore have a positive net effect in reducing global warming.

Hostgator has bought renewable energy credits (RECs), by paying a Texas windfarm to generate energy on its behalf. This power is put into the grid. When Hostgator uses this power from the grid, it offsets it against the credits purchased.

In this way you can benefit by contributing to the use of renewable energy resources, even if your power comes from the general grid.

MindMapTutor’s approach

Now let’s take MindMapTutor as an example. On my own, I don’t have the resources to fund a wind farm, or power my hosting servers directly using renewable energy. But, by hosting with a company that is Green certified, my host servers are giving back more than they are taking out.

In this way MindMapTutor.com can be seen as a ‘Green’ website and contributing to saving the planet.

You can also minimise your impact on the environment. A quick start can be found at CarbonTracker.com, which lists 11 ways in which you can easily make a difference.

While this is a very short article, it was a very difficult one to write. Global warming and environmental issues are not my area of expertise. I just wanted to make sure that you are aware of the problem and show that sometimes a little forethought can make a huge difference.