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IONOS Announces Its Climate Strategy 2023

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Updated on August 31, 2023

Big green badge on the IONOS homepage that says "Green Hosting."

In July 2023 IONOS announced the details of its Climate Strategy for 2030.
We’ll go over it, to see what this means for IONOS users and the planet at large.

It’s estimated that the average website produces 0.12 – 1.76kg of CO2 for every page view (ours is at a nice 0.12). What that means is if you have 10,000 page views at 1.72kg each month that’s emitting around 211,200kg of CO2 every year. This is why it’s an idea to hold your website builder accountable to create a more sustainable approach for businesses. We delved into ecological insights to unpick the impact of IONOS’ announcement, along with breaking down the jargon.

CO2 stands for carbon dioxide, it’s a naturally occurring gas that we breathe out, and forms part of the process of nature, as plants “breathe it in” and clear it out of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is in large part responsible for global warming and believe it or not, creating a website can generate CO2. That’s just from the data centers – not including areas like ecommerce, transporting items, etc.

Climate Strategy 2030: Carbon Emissions

IONOS has the goal to reduce its data center carbon emissions by 55% from now until 2030, which is fantastic news! But it doesn’t really show in the strategy exactly how much the data centers are emitting, so we did some digging using this neat website carbon calculator to figure it out. It’s hard to say the total amount of carbon an entire business is creating but with this calculator, we’re able to see at the very least these two:

Ionos.co.uk emits 59.55kg of carbon dioxide per month
Ionos.com emits 71.2kg of carbon dioxide per month

That’s the equivalent of 7 trees to clean that amount of carbon dioxide, in a year! IONOS states that it’s “committed to continuing to source 100% renewable electricity longer-term… In addition, IONOS plans that 50% of its own data centers will have on-site generation of renewable energy, such as photovoltaics.”

More Information

How to Make Your Website Eco-Friendly – discover more about how to shape a sustainable business for the future of this wonderful world.
9 Best Green Hosting Providers – go with green hosting to ensure your business doesn’t just build your wealth, but the planets health.

The Progress in Sustainability So Far

That’s all well and good for a business to state it’s striving towards 100% renewable electricity and “100% renewable energy across all operations,” but what progress has IONOS made up until now?

Since 2021, IONOS has made some of its offices powered by renewable electricity. It ramped up renewable electricity to up to 99.5% in total across all operations and offices. Also, credit where it is due, IONOS did reduce its energy consumption by 9.6% since 2018, while also recycling over 510 tonnes of servers and IT equipment. Also lately in the UK, IONOS has installed solar products for its data center.

Is It Enough from IONOS?

Comparatively, we’d say this is pretty good progress from IONOS in its climate strategy and we hope that it further ramps up to beyond the intended 55% carbon emission reduction. Still, IONOS provides a hopeful look at the future for business, and if you’re interested in building an online store with IONOS we offer you the IONOS review in the section below.

We’d like to see more website builders set a precedent for helping the planet – because what’s more inspiring than companies building wealth, and sharing it with this wonderful planet? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

More Information

IONOS website builder review – see our research-backed IONOS review to see the real pros and cons.
Squarespace’s ESG report – the latest news in Squarespace’s green efforts, see how they compare.

Introduction statistic: Wired

Written by:

Jacqueline Renouard Writer

I’m a writer at Website Builder Guide, having joined the team in March 2022. Before joining I had my own freelance content writing business and now I work to test builders and write the content you read here on the site – so you can create a website that best suits you and your needs. Over my first year here I’ve tested all the builders you’ll read about, shaped the weekly newsletter content, written social media content, and scripted YouTube videos. I’ve also created demo websites to help showcase the builder’s capabilities so you can pick the best option. I’ve also had the wonderful opportunity to pitch articles for the site like the Best Writer Websites and write guest posts for the likes of Digital Information World, using my degree expertise in Film to share tips on video optimization.