It’s being described as a move to make sure city council is ready before Windsor is faced with answering questions around allowing an AI data centre. Ward 9 Coun. Kieran McKenzie has asked city administration to report back to council on the potential risks, infrastructure strains, and long-term impacts associated with the development and operation of large-scale data centres within the city of Windsor. “What is our power and energy grid capacity? What would be the requirements from a water consumption and cooling perspective? What does that mean from a land use perspective? As we know, there’s a limited amount of industrialized and serviced land in our community currently,” he says. Concerns have been raised in communities across Canada over the impact of AI data centres due to the massive amounts of power required to operate them, the impact on water supplies as the high-capacity cooling systems draw heavily from local water supplies, along with other concerns around noise and the impact on neighbourhoods. Both the federal and provincial governments are encouraging data centre development. McKenzie says they need to have information around land use from an economic development, job creation, and environmental standpoint. “When and if or if and when we see a potential investment or investor come forward with a proposal, the council already has an idea of how they want to handle that investment,” he says. “What safeguards need to be in place to be able to protect the community from a range of different risks in proceeding with that type of investment.” McKenzie says he wants this information understood by council before there is investment pressure because it will be a challenging discussion even with all the information. “Trying to reconcile the environmental impacts and the capacity impacts versus the investment and the potential taxation revenue for the municipality that could be associated with a development like this. Then there’s the jobs piece,” he says. In early September, Essex County Council voted to spend up to $150,000 for a study that would examine the potential impacts of an AI data centre on electricity, water, noise, the environment, and municipal infrastructure. A report is expected to come back to a future meeting of city council.
