If your business is in Edmonton, the electricity running your office, your shop floor and, if your website is hosted locally, your web server comes from one of the more carbon-intensive grids in Canada. That is not a knock on Alberta. The province has cut the emissions intensity of its electricity sharply over the past two decades and finished moving off coal in June 2024, years ahead of its own 2030 deadline. But the grid that remains runs mostly on natural gas, and on the federal government's own numbers it sits in a different category from the hydro-dominated grids to the west. That one fact changes how an Edmonton company should think about green hosting. Most advice on the subject assumes a reader whose local grid is already fairly clean, or one whose only lever is buying credits. For a business in Vancouver or Montreal, the local grid already does most of the work, and the question is mostly about efficiency and accounting. For a business in Edmonton, the province where your server physically sits is the largest variable you control. It often matters more than whether a host describes itself as green. This guide works through that decision without the usual marketing gloss. It explains what green hosting means in practice, sets out Environment and Climate Change Canada's provincial figures, and runs an illustrative calculation so you can see the real scale of the difference. It then tests the benefits commonly claimed for green hosting. Some hold up; some do not. It also covers the part most guides skip entirely: since 2024, Canada's Competition Act has contained specific rules for environmental claims. Those rules govern what you say on your own website about your hosting, not just what a host says to you. What "green hosting" actually means Three different things get called green hosting or sustainable web hosting, and they are not interchangeable. A provider may be pulling one lever, two, or all three, and the difference matters when you try to verify what you are buying. Where the electricity comes from The first lever is the source of the electricity reaching the servers. A data centre on...
