Your 'green hosting' badge is meaningless

Right then, lads

I use Hostinger. Small shop, 200 servers, I know where every watt goes. I looked into one of them "100% renewable" badges for the website. Proper green credentials, like.

Turns out I can buy RECs—Renewable Energy Certificates—from a wind farm in texas while my servers are in London. The electrons do not care. The badge does not care. The customer thinks they are saving polar bears.

I emailed the badge people. "does location matter?" no. "does timing matter?" no. "does additionality matter?" they sent me a brochure.

This is arbitrage with extra steps. I am not buying the badge. But CloudCone has it. Time4VPS has it. Feels like I am the mug for being honest about it.

Anyone actually verified what their host is doing ?

Lol yeah I looked into this for my reseller account The REC thing is basically accounting tricks You buy a certificate that says someone somewhere made green energy Doesnt mean your server uses it I asked my upstream if they could prove their power source and they sent me a pdf that looked like I made it in 2005 Run-on paragraph but basically its all nonsense until someone audits the actual meter on the actual rack

I tried to verify KnownHost's badge—my client insisted on "green hosting"—the REC they claimed was from a hydro plant in norway—I checked the registry—valid certificate—then I checked the date—issued three months after the claim period—so they were buying credits retroactively—like offsetting a hangover with tomorrow's aspirin—then I noticed the hydro plant had been decommissioned in 2022—still issuing credits somehow—regulatory gap—I emailed the badge org—no response—emailed again—auto-reply about "high volume"—the badge is still on KnownHost's site—my client does not care because their marketing team loves the little leaf icon—

The whole thing is a scam mate

I asked Hetzner for their PPA docs

They sent me a reciept from a broker

Not a power purchase agreement

A reciept

The broker doenst even own the wind farm

Its just guys wif spreadsheets

You figure it out he says

I runs my own solar now

Host from garage

40w arm board

Not scaleable but at least its real

I believe HostHatch publishes hourly matched data. Not annual REC aggregation. Their Tokyo region shows real-time grid mix. I used https://hosthatch.com for that check.

I asked them directly. They provided generator registration numbers. I checked with the utility. The numbers were valid.

This is rare. Most "green hosting" is the badge Lee describes.

Thank you for this thread, very useful lah

I checked my host, can not find any proof. Only badge. I ask them, they say "we buy credit, same thing lah." Not same thing, I think.

I move slow-slow to HostHatch. Thank you @kenji3 for the verification tip. I check the generator numbers also.

Wkwkwk the badge from my old host is gone now. I see they remove during this week. Maybe they read this forum also. Thank you again for the education.

Decommissioned in 2022 and still issuing credits? How does that work