SIDN, the .nl registry, and Cleanbits, the green Internet promoter, carried out a joint study in March 2009 to quantify the market share of CO2-neutral service providers in the .nl Internet zone.
Green or grey
The study involved finding out whether the 3.3 million-plus .nl domain names were hosted by ‘grey’ or ‘green’ service providers. The findings indicate that roughly one in eight (11.3%) of .nl domain names are hosted by firms operating on a CO2-neutral basis – in other words using (only) green energy, or offsetting grey-energy CO2 emissions by funding the plantation of trees.
In March of this year, the European Commission decided that by 2015 the ICT sector had to cut its CO2 emissions by 20 per cent. Since the Dutch ICT sector is expanding rapidly, the target represents a major challenge for all market players, including SIDN and Cleanbits.
