Meta to Build First Canada Data Center in Alberta
Photo: REUTERS
Tech titan Meta revealed plans on Wednesday to build a massive C$13 billion ($9.17 billion) data center in Sturgeon County, Alberta, marking its first such facility in Canada.
The 1-gigawatt powerhouse, which possesses the ability to scale up to 1.8 gigawatts, supports the company’s rapid expansion of computing capacity for the global AI boom.
Executives announced the project in Calgary alongside Premier Danielle Smith and other provincial officials. Alberta’s Technology Minister, Nate Glubish, told reporters, “This is the first of its kind, the first of its size, the first of its scale, but it won’t be the last.”
Officials have spent years courting Silicon Valley, leveraging the province’s cold climate and affordable natural gas to attract large-scale tech investments.
The data center will consume energy equivalent to 800,000 homes. Gary Demasi, Meta’s vice president for data center development, emphasized that the company will invest in clean and renewable energy to offset this consumption.
He also noted that the site will utilize a closed-loop liquid cooling system, ensuring its total water usage remains lower than that of a typical golf course.
For power, Meta has partnered with Pembina Pipeline to develop the Greenlight Electricity Centre, a natural gas-fired facility slated for service in late 2030. In the interim, Capital Power will supply 250 megawatts from its existing fleet.
The project will generate a daily demand for 150 million cubic feet of natural gas.
However, the plan faces significant backlash from environmentalists due to Alberta’s carbon-heavy grid, which has five times the emissions intensity of the national average.
Keith Stewart of Greenpeace Canada condemned the move, saying, “We need a moratorium on mega-data centers until we have legislated environmental and human rights protections on AI.”
Source: Reuters (adapted)
