County north of Edmonton says $13B Meta data centre is ‘welcome’ as water, power logistics unveiled

Meta has announced it is building a $13 billion data centre north of Edmonton. CTV News Edmonton's Connor Hogg has the details.

The tech behemoth behind Facebook and Instagram says it plans to make Alberta home to its first artificial intelligence data centre in Canada and its largest outside the United States.

Meta announced Wednesday that the $13-billion-plus project is to be built in Sturgeon County, in the Industrial Heartland region north of Edmonton.

The one-gigawatt, nearly 270,000-square-metre data centre would be powered by a natural gas-fired plant alongside the centre, to be built by a consortium that includes Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Ltd.

It takes about 1.4 gigawatts to power Edmonton. The proposed data centre campus could fit 33 Canadian Football League fields.

Sturgeon County Mayor Alanna Hnatiw says the community welcomes the project and is excited to work with Meta.

The county, which borders Edmonton to the north, is becoming an “important part of Canada’s emerging AI and power corridor,” Hnatiw told reporters on Wednesday.

“And that brings opportunity, and it also brings with it responsibility,” she said.

“I am so pleased that Meta has embraced the environmental standards in our designated industrial zone and that they are willing participants in our approach to responsible land stewardship.”

Alberta ‘better equipped’ for data centres: professor

A University of Alberta engineering professor says Alberta may be better equipped to handle data centres than other parts of Canada.

“We have our cooler climate, so we can reduce a lot of the cooling impact from the data centres. Our nature is actually helping us,” Yize Chen told CTV News Edmonton.

“Alberta, and our general west side, we have more hydros and we have more renewables. We should be okay with more data centre penetration, but the challenge still exists (with the) power grid.”

Data centres house computing hardware needed for a wide array of tech applications. With the boom in artificial intelligence, the facilities have grown to mind-boggling scales, often requiring enough electricity to power a whole city.

With the dizzying growth of the data centre industry have come concerns over water use, pollution and the cost and availability of power in nearby communities.

The province says it worked with both the county and Meta to identify and mitigate electrical, environmental and economic concerns.

The designated location for the side-by-side power plant and data centre is not used for housing, farming or food production, the province added.

The centre will use a closed-loop liquid cooling system, a process developers promise won’t poach water from the surrounding area. Meta’s corporate plans suggest annual operational water use is projected to be “less than one typical golf course or a 50 acre canola farm in the region.”

“Estimates say for every 20 to 50 ChatGPT queries, that will be equivalent to one bottle of water. So I think if you compare this number, it’s actually much smaller than, say, a golf course,” Chen said of the plan.

“I think the government is doing some evaluation on better recycling of water. In Alberta we have a cooler climate, which reduces a lot of evaporation, so that will reduce the water usage of Alberta data centres.”

The company said it also plans to spend $60 million to improve local infrastructure, such as roads and water systems.

The Alberta government estimates the project will create 3,000 construction jobs and 300 jobs during operations. It also expects to get $250 million in annual benefits via royalties, taxes, levies and fees.

Alberta has been actively courting hyperscalers like Meta to set up shop in the province, setting up a “concierge” service to help navigate the regulatory process.

In late 2024, Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish said Alberta hoped to have $100 billion in data centres under construction in five years.

But its electricity grid currently doesn’t have capacity to accommodate several such projects. So it’s prioritizing projects that build or contract their own power generation, as Meta is planning to do.

Meta’s announcement is a “big deal for Alberta,” Glubish said Wednesday.

Background

Last week, Pembina Pipeline, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor Asset Management announced they had decided to go ahead with their Greenlight Electricity Centre in Sturgeon County. At the time, they didn’t disclose the customer would be Meta.

They expect their 932-megawatt power project to cost $4.6 billion to build, with startup targeted for the second half of 2030. The companies have permits that would allow them to double capacity down the line.

Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, called for a moratorium on “megadata centres,” until there are legislated environmental and human rights protections on AI.

“We’re seeing these kinds of promises made all by AI data centre proponents around the world, but the reality is that these are billionaires trying to steal our water and pollute the air so they can double our electricity while taking away our jobs.”

With files from The Canadian Press and CTV News Edmonton’s Connor Hogg