Last year we began a search to recruit a new board for the Green Web Foundation to support its development through the 2020’s. As part of that process, we created a two-tiered leadership system with an executive team and a board providing strategic oversight. Now that the board transition is complete, our longest serving board member and the founder of the organization René Post is stepping down. We would like to recognise his work and share our gratitude here.
Back in 2006, René Post and Arend-Jan Tetteroo saw the opportunity to verify whether web service providers were running on green energy. They showed you could use some of the foundational protocols of the internet to do this, and they set up CleanBits as a company to offer this service to the world and help hosting providers transition to green energy. They also built the first version of the Green Web platform, later offering an API and with support from SIDN.nl, a browser extension to automatically check the sites as you browse or search the web.
As the need for this kind of service grew, René and AJ saw that transparency data about the tech industry should exist as a public good rather than a private company. In 2011 they created the Green Web Foundation as a Dutch non-profit to track and accelerate the web’s transition to green energy.
Chris Adams joined the organization in 2019 with the goal of turning this service into an open dataset. Working together Rene and AJ, and with the seed funding from the German Prototype Fund, and began publishing open data regularly, and working with a newly open sourced codebase. This was also the year that the Green Web Checkrecently passed its billionth check.
In 2020, Chris Adams and Michelle Thorne joined the board of the organization following the inauguration of our Green Web Fellowship program, the launch of the magazine Branch, and the development of open source tools like CO2.js. The mission of a fossil-free internet emerged as a focus for the Green Web Foundation going forward.
Since then, René has handed over the leadership and operations of the foundation to the incoming team. He helped recruit a new board to support the organization in its next phase. To conclude this transition, Chris and Michelle are also stepping down from their board seats while continuing their roles in the executive team.
René has been a long time advocate for a more sustainable web. He’s championed providers who want to do the right thing and encourage an ecosystem that incentives digital sustainability.
A huge thank you to your vision and support over the years, René!
If we’re destined to stop using fossil fuels for electricity, why not start today, especially in the hosting and datacenter sectors where a fast transition is most achievable?”
René Post
The incoming board
In the following weeks, we’ll share more about our new board and strategic work towards a fossil-free internet by 2030.
We’re looking forward to welcoming Laura James, former board member of Open UK and now Engineering Director at Overstory as our new chair, Tin Geber, former Managing Director at Greenhost and founder of Stackspin as our treasurer, and Amrita Sengupta, Research and Program Lead at Centre for Internet and Society as secretary.
