Dallas, Texas Goes Green

Posted in Green

From Green Hosting to Green Construction, Dallas Focuses on Sustainability Issues

Green is the new standard for building in Dallas and no longer ‘just an option.’ The Dallas City Council passed a new green construction requirement/ordinance aimed at reducing energy and water consumption in ALL new houses and commercial buildings. Dallas is one of the first major U.S. cities to pass a comprehensive building standard for both residential and commercial construction. To read more about the ordinance, www.GreenDallas.net Click on “Green Buildings”.

Dallas, Texas Goes Green

Dallas has been selected as the first city in the nation to partner with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the North Central Texas Council of Governments on a program focusing on sustainability issues, particularly air quality. The Sustainable Skylines Initiative involves completing several three-year projects to reduce air emissions. Because of the success experienced in Dallas, the EPA is using the program as a national model for other cities.

Green initiatives for companies

Consider a green hosting provider for your website. Texas web hosting providers are an excellent starting point for your research. Find a Texas web host that offers green hosting, and from there–you can begin researching the company until you make your choice.

Green web hosting

If you are environmentally conscious, consider using a green web host. Green web hosts are dedicated to using alternative energy sources, such as wind power, to power their web servers for their hosting. The features and customer service offered to clients are usually no different than those offered by non-green hosts, so you will not need to make any sacrifices for choosing green.

As you have seen, finding a web host that offers the features you need for your website does not have to be a difficult ordeal. If you use the advice you have read in this article, you should be well prepared to select a web hosting provider that is right for you.

Dallas leads the way in green data centers. The SoftLayer data center located in Dallas is twice as efficient and uses half the energy than traditional data centers.

The Green Data Center offers:

Representative member of the Green Grid - furthering our commitment to environmentally friendly operations
Representative member of the Uptime Institute, a prestigious knowledge consortium where global standards and best practices are created and delivered to maintain system uptime and availability
State-of-the-art data center built from the ground up with the goal of being more energy efficient - provides twice the efficiency and uses half the energy of many existing data centers and it is expected that the data center will achieve a 1.3 “co-efficiency of efficiency” ranking, which is well below the 1.6 “ideal” rating.

Not sure how to choose a web host? Read this!

If you are starting your own website, you may have heard how difficult it can be to find a great web hosting service. As with many things, it is only difficult if you do not know what you are doing.

Find a great web host for your site.

Determine how many databases you currently require, and expect to require in the future. Keep in mind that you will need additional databases for each new domain that you add to your web hosting package. You might need to invest in another hosting package if you run out of databases, even if you have room to add more domains. Find out if it is possible to expand the package you are considering, and add additional databases if the need arises.

Be aware that if you use site templates to create your website, the monthly web hosting fees will almost always be higher. This is because you will be constantly accessing their online tools to update your site, thus creating more use on their system. Though it can easy for a beginner to build a site this way, consider the cost effectiveness of hiring a professional designer up front, and saving much more than that on monthly fees.

When you are choosing a web hosting company, it is important that you rely on more than just one or two pieces of advice on a recommendation. Many recommendations are from people who haven't even experienced the web hosting company that they are recommending. Choose wisely, do your research, and know many things about the company that you choose.

Green goals for companies:

Become a partner with the Dallas Sustainable Skylines Initiative!

There are several suggested projects falling under five categories in which businesses may participate.

Categories:

Enhanced Central City Livability
Promote Green Buildings and Development
Implement and Promote Renewable Energy
Energy Efficiency Reduce Emissions from Stationary Sources
Area Sources Reduce Off-Road Emissions

Benefits to being a partner include: Positive publicity Economic growth with state-of-the-art environmental protection Potential for credit under the Clean Air Act State Implementation Plan program. Reduced population pollutant exposure enhances livability in the not only Dallas, but the entire state of Texas.

What can my company do in Dallas, Texas to Go Green?

Reuse rain water. This can be done using a rain barrel attached to a rain chain or drain spout. You can reuse this water to water your garden or lawn, fill a birdbath or even wash your windows. Many people use it in their house as well to flush toilets.

Make sure that your air vents aren't blocked in some way. Blocked air vents can lead to increased energy usage due to the fact that you will turn up the cooling in your home because you don't feel the air coming out. Thoroughly inspect them to ensure nothing is blocking the air. If there is, you'll be surprised at the difference once you eliminate the problem.

In fact, your company may already be doing these things!

Examples of partners in Dallas who are participating in green (in a big way!)

Here are some examples of what current partners are doing/have committed to do:

Yellow Cab is buying and operating cleaner cabs (hybrids, etc).
Habitat for Humanity is teaching people how to build ‘green’ homes.
Agriboard is donating labor for the construction of a new public library.
Green Mountain Energy donated 5,000 CFL bulbs for distribution to Dallas residents.
FOX4 is promoting green practices within its own facilities and hosted environmental events.

Green tips for homeowners in Dallas

Invest in solar power for your home. Adding a few solar panels to your roof can actually decrease the cost of heating or cooling your home by up to 50%! Talk to a professional about where best to install them on your roof, as the placement is very important to get the optimal amount of direct sunlight.
Use solar water heaters as a great alternative to heating water with electricity. They use the sun's energy to heat water for use in your home or business. The ideal location for a solar water heating system is a south-facing roof that is not shaded. Current technologies allow the system to blend in with your roof so as not to detract from your home.
If your exhaust fans are more than five years old, consider replacing them with newer more efficient models. Each year you should examine each exhaust fan in your home for damage and replace the filter. A damaged exhaust fan uses more energy and changing the filter allows the fan to work more efficiently.

Tips for homeowners to save on electricity and go green

If you are trying to save on your electricity bill, try to use your ceiling fan more in the summer. A ceiling fan can help to make any room feel about 10 degrees cooler, and it costs much less to run than an air conditioner does. You will be saving money and also using less electricity, meaning you're doing something great for the environment.
If your dishwasher was made before 1994, replace it with a new, high-efficiency model to save both electricity and water. Modern dishwashers use fewer gallons per load than older units, and they come with a wider variety of settings that allow you to customize your energy usage based on the size of the load.
Consider opting for a solar hot water heating system. If you must use hot water to run your dishwasher or do your laundry, a solar hot water system can benefit you. If you live in an area where freezing is not a concern, a direct circulation system will be perfect for you.
People looking to go green would be wise to use oil lanterns to light up their homes. Oil lanterns don't use any electricity at all, and there are even some lanterns out there that will run on used vegetable oil that you can easily get from restaurants or your own kitchen.
If you are still using a more traditional source of energy, invest in a programmable thermostat. This will let you pre-set your temperatures for both day and night times. This leads to savings in both money and energy as during the night many people allow their homes to cool down via the natural decrease in temperature.

Dallas web hosting and green initiatives

Dallas companies are looking for more green initiatives and ways to not only improve their company's bottom line, but also to portray a corporate culture to the Internet community that shows responsibility, a concern for the environment, and initiatives to be more green.

Austin, Texas Goes Green

Posted in Green

Austin, Texas Goes Green

Austin, Texas Goes Green:

From Green Hosting to Smart Grid Communities like Pecan Street, Austin Leads The Way

Austin, Texas is a progressive community, leading the way in green building and other environmentally friendly initiatives. Businesses, like web hosting providers, and city-wide sponsors lead the way in getting green. The capital of Texas, Austin leads the green revolution with help from Austin Energy, the local power source, the Environmental Defense Fund, the local university and the federal stimulus program, enacted in 2009, that provides loans, grants and other support to aid developers, builders and entrepreneurs go green and stay green through sound design practices that improve the air residents breathe.

Green Tech Meets High Tech

For more than 20 years, Austin has fostered leading edge business development with companies like Dell computers and Sematech, a company that serves high tech businesses with innovative manufacturing solutions, so getting green isn’t a short-sighted objective of the community. In fact, green building and operational activity is right at home in the great state of Texas and has been for decades.

The high tech sector has drawn tens of thousands of engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs and other smart energy users to create an incubator for new business – especially high tech businesses that employ green tech to power up profits. Austin’s business community proves that green is not only good for the environment, it’s good for business.

One example of the city’s environmentally friendly approach to commercial development is Green Host It - a web hosting company that employs Texas wind energy and water power to provide web-based businesses with green power to grow. Founded in 2009, Green Host It is one of the few green web hosting companies in the world. Instead of drawing power from traditional, Texas-based energy sources, Green Host It employs wind turbines to power its operations to fuel business growth and water power to cool the business’ giant servers that connect web-based businesses to web users.

We fully support Austin’s approach to building and business development,” explains Stephanie Rosendahl, founder of Green Host It. “In fact, our business model is based squarely on green technology to deliver the services our clients require to succeed on the Internet,” Ms. Rosendahl explained during a recent interview.

Green web hosting is an example of how high tech businesses utilize green energy alternatives to change the landscape of the Austin community through the use of renewable energy resources. “Green web hosting is a core belief of Austin’s commercial sector,” explains Ms. Rosendahl, “and Green Host It has integrated the latest in green tech into state-of-the-art web hosting services.”

Companies like Green Host It are changing the way business does business in Austin, enjoying tax incentives and establishing good corporate citizen practices that other growing businesses now turn to.

Clean tech, employed by Green Host It and other high tech companies, depends on local, state and federal policies, subsidies for renewable energy use and government mandates to improve energy efficiency through the use of green building practices and renewable energy resources. Despite the fact that web hosting companies draw huge amounts of power, Green Host It and other high tech companies have shrunk their carbon footprints in Austin, crating the perfect combination of high tech and green technologies to expand the commercial base of the city without creating a negative impact on the local environment. With the integration of clean technology into all phases of commercial development, other cities are turning to Austin to provide the road map to business expansion without the negatives associated with commercial use of traditional energy sources. Choose web hosting Texas. Choose wind power.

Pecan Street: The Smart Grid Community

Call it an experiment, or a look into our future, the Pecan Street project demonstrates how communities can employ the latest in solar energy, smart home technology, electric vehicles and more efficient use of energy resources to create an innovative community based on the simple principle of “less is more” when it comes to energy consumption.

Located in Austin’s historic Mueller neighborhood, the Pecan Street program involves manufacturers, residential homes and clean energy businesses that focus on improving the quality of life for residents, employees and the entire Austin community.

An example? HelioVolt maintains a 12,000 square foot plant with neat rows or printing machines, chemical vats and ovens powered efficiently with a gleaming array of the latest in solar panel technology. The company is just one example of how the Austin business sector embraces the green building movement – a movement that uses thin solar panels that are more energy efficient than the thick, expensive photo-voltaic panels that were used just a few years back.

HelioVolt’s CEO, Jim Flanary, is a staunch advocate of the latest in solar tech, stating, “If you can do this really cheaply and really quickly, you’ve got a winner. We want to scale up as soon as we can.” The lessons learned from the Pecan Street smart grid program have been applied across the entire business sector of Austin, placing the big city with a small, college town feel, ahead of other green cities like San Francisco, California, Boulder, Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts.

What makes the Pecan Street project even more impressive is that Texas is a part of the “oil patch” – a large region that produces millions of barrels of oil and other traditional fossil fuels, a region that relies on traditional energy resources for revenues, employment and power. Even so, Pecan Street has received financial support from the community’s local energy supplier, community licensing agencies and smart energy advocacy groups at all levels of government.

In fact, Austin is the home of numerous green businesses usually associated with politically liberal towns. However, the Austin, Texas business community has embraced green building practices as part of the city’s innovative, hip culture, making green practices not only smart but tech-savvy, as well.

The Future of the Green Revolution

The future of clean tech is evident today – right now – in Austin, thanks to visionary business leaders like Pecan Street’s Jim Flanary, Michael Dell and Green Host It’s Stephanie Rosendahl.

The Austin business community is ideally suited to make maximum use of the next major steps in going green, transforming the way we conduct business and manage metropolitan areas for the benefit of residents and the global environment. Austin is a leader in areas like green web hosting, digital development, smart car tech and other innovations that are good for business and good for the air we breathe.

However, Austin and its business partners still face numerous challenges including a shrinking pool of venture capital, the sometimes overwhelming costs of swapping clean tech for out-moded technologies that depend on fossil fuels, and the politics of oil, natural gas and other traditional energy resources. Budget cuts at the federal, state and city levels have pointed out the need for continued government and business support for the use of clean energy.

HelioVolt’s founder, B.J. Stanbery, a native Texan, makes a strong case for the continued support of governments and venture capitalists in the development of more clean tech energy resources, strongly suggesting that the local economies of cities like Austin will continue to rely on new energy technology to expand within areas like the Pecan Street program.

The manufacturing skills that workers have here [in Austin] are directly transferable to a thin-film solar company like us,” states Mr. Stanbery. “And the business culture is attractive here because people are used to taking risks in the energy space.

The viability of clean tech expanding within the oil patch that surrounds Pecan Street, Green Host It, Dell and the hundreds of other environmentally-conscious businesses that are now part of the fiscal infrastructure of Austin isn’t in doubt. The trend toward green will continue with companies like Green Host It and Sematech, and energy smart developments like Austin’s Pecan Street, proving that clean technology works at work.

Austin continues to lead the way in green tech initiatives and smart business people take notice that clean tech is good for the environment and the bottom line – an investment in the future of our cities and our economy, providing a model for other metropolitan areas to follow.