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We refer to it as fossil free, because for us, it names the problem to solve – to divest from fossil fuels, and phasing out fossil fuels from hosting infrastructure.
This is broadly in-line with our blog post, No Fossil Fuels in Our Tech Stacks, and previously, we’ve had a definition of green energy that was to some extent determined by a) what you could reasonably expect hosting providers to be able to meet and b) what various conflicting national standards could agree on.
Understanding how fossil-free and carbon-free relate to each other
If you are already familiar with the term, you can think of fossil-free as functionally identical to the term carbon-free as defined in in the Climate Groups’s 24/7 Carbon Free Coalition Technical guidance.
On a more practical basis, we use the term fossil free, because when you take a step back and look at the emissions from fossil fuel usage, even if you use fossil methane gas with carbon capture and storage, you can still drive global heating, because before being burnt, ‘upstream’ fossil methane gas can leak from gas pipes, and from ships carrying liquified natural gas (LNG) around the world.
Methane is 60-80 times more powerful a driver of global heating than carbon dioxide over the timelines that matter to us, so again, we name the problem to solve.
This treatment of fossil gas with carbon capture is also inline the Climate Groups’s 24/7 Carbon Free Coalition Technical guidance.