Tech giant Meta announced on Wednesday that it will build a large data centre in central Alberta, its first in Canada , to support the global artificial intelligence boom by rapidly expanding computing power. Meta says the 1-gigawatt data centre will be located in Sturgeon County, with a total investment of CAD 13 billion (US$9.17 billion).Meta has ramped up its efforts in artificial intelligence and pledged hundreds of billions of dollars to build large-scale AI data centres in the United States. This announcement in Alberta marks the opening of the company’s 33rd data centre globally.
Company executives announced the news in Calgary alongside Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and other provincial officials. These officials have been working for years to attract Silicon Valley tech giants in an effort to drive massive investment in the oil and gas-rich province. Like other tech giants, Meta faces rapidly growing electricity demand due to the development of artificial intelligence, while Alberta has abundant natural gas resources, and its prices are far below the US benchmark price.
The province’s cold climate also makes it more economical and efficient to provide cooling for the massive supercomputers and related data centre infrastructure. Alberta’s existing 20 small and medium-sized data centres are already connected to the province’s power grid, which draws 60% of its electricity from natural gas. The provincial government is offering new project proposals the option of building their own power sources to circumvent power capacity limitations.
Meta said Wednesday it will fully fund the new power generation and grid infrastructure needed for its Alberta data centre, which will consume the equivalent of 800,000 homes’ electricity. The company has partnered with Pembina Pipeline, headquartered in Alberta. Pembina Pipeline announced last week that it will move forward with its Greenlight Electricity Centre project—a new natural gas power generation facility in Sturgeon County expected to be operational by the end of 2030.
Meta has already entered into a long-term power purchase agreement with the facility. According to Pembina, the project will consume approximately 150 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, which will help create demand for natural gas producers in western Canada. Last month, the Canadian government unveiled an artificial intelligence strategy, noting that the growth of new data centres would benefit from the country’s clean power grid, which is powered primarily by renewable energy and low-emissions power sources.
However, the vast majority of data centres currently in the planning stage in Canada are located in Alberta, where the province’s reliance on natural gas results in its power grid having emissions intensity that is almost five times the national average.