What’s behind our label

In order to give our customers a flagship for their green website, we have developed our own label. This not only reflects that they host their website or online shop with Petricore, but that their own website is operated more than just carbon neutral.

While we have dealt intensively with what climate-neutral and climate-positive actually means, it became apparent that our hosting is more than just „green“ or climate-friendly – it’s even climate-positive.

110% – is that even possible?

When naming 110% in our label, we consider the period from hosting to delivery.

In order to make our offer as green and environmentally friendly as possible, we first of all chose the server location Iceland. Because there, the power supply is fed from 100% renewable energies. Accordingly, our servers in Iceland are also operated with renewable energy from hydropower and heat from geothermal energy. All of our mail, our website, storage and backups are located on these servers.

Green electricity alone is not enough

Nowadays, servers must always be available. With the help of green energy in Iceland we can guarantee that for our servers.

We don’t have to hope for a lot of sun or wind or rely on burning biomass at night. With the server location in Iceland, we use 100% pure green electricity that does not unnecessarily burn organic products. In addition, due to the relatively cool temperatures in Iceland all year round, our servers do not require any cooling systems. Ergo, we also save on the power supply for cooling systems, because we simply don’t need them. Therefore, there are no costs to the environment that would have to be offset in some way.

We think ahead

We also think about this concept of savings when using and loading our servers. With the help of a cluster system and virtualisation, we want to utilise our servers as effectively and efficiently as possible. If the load is half (or less), Petricore doesn’t let the next server and the server after that run along, just because you might need it at some point. Here, too, we save electricity. We only connect what is actually used to the power grid.

In addition, we operate our servers around 50% longer than conventional hosters and save on new purchases at this point – and thus also on the use of important resources that would be needed for the production of servers, although their predecessor models are still functional and durable.

And what about traffic?

All other channels are not in our hands. But that doesn’t mean that our commitment ends here. On the contrary!

We keep thinking and we keep committing. The websites, online shops and e-mail services we host are primarily accessed in continental Europe. While we cannot influence the power supply that our customers and their customers use, we use green electricity in our decentralised office spaces, so that our work does not cause any additional environmental pollution.

Always one step ahead

As just mentioned, we anticipate that both – some customers and their site users – still have room for improvement. To this end, we and our customers voluntarily offset any CO₂ emissions by supporting our server location Iceland in reforestation and investing in the rewetting of moor. After all, moors and forests are the two largest CO₂ neutralisers that exist on our planet.

How much carbon dioxide (CO₂) does a server actually cause?

Obviously, we also recalculated these thoughts. Over the normal lifetime of a server (7.5 years), it emits 1.6 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO₂eq) through raw material extraction or recycling, manufacturing, transport and the necessary infrastructure of a data center such as emergency power or backups. In addition, there are usually 1.5 tons for cooling and 5 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents for electricity.

Therse points cease for Petricore, because we use pure green electricity and do not need any cooling systems.

An additional 13.5 tons per year are assumed just from the traffic generated on a server (12 TB per server per year | 1 TB corresponds to 150 kg CO₂eq). In short, conventional servers emit 21.5 tons of carbon dioxide over 7.5 years. That reveals about 3 tons per year. In comparison, our servers cause only 15.1 tons in 7.5 years – ergo about 2 tons per year. So here, we see a saving of one ton of carbon dioxide per server per year.

What approach are we taking to carbon offsetting?

Since we are not satisfied with simply reaching the limit values, we lead by example and recommend a minimum compensation of 2% to our customers. We don’t want to get roughly 100%, but to offer some extra to the environment. This is what our label shall also illustrate.

In concrete terms, we offset the 2 tons of CO₂-emissions per server by planting 160 trees in Iceland or by maintaining and renaturing 8 hectares of moors.

Do you like our way of thinking?

Then switch to Petricore now and show your web users, your customers or your readership that you care about the environment and get our label!