Meta builds its first data center in Canada, a 13 billion C$ data center in Alberta

The tech giant Meta announced on Wednesday that it would build its first data center in Canada in central Alberta.

Meta announced that the 1-gigawatt facility will be built in Sturgeon County, and represent a total investment amounting to C$13 billion or $9.17billion. Meta is doubling down on AI and has pledged hundreds of billions to build large AI-based data centers in the U.S. The announcement in?Alberta marks the company's global 33rd data centre. The announcement was made in Calgary by the executives alongside Premier Danielle Smith, and other government officials from?Alberta. They have been courting Silicon Valley technology giants for several years to spur a large-scale?investment?into the oil-and gas province.

Meta, along with other tech giants is faced with rapidly increasing power needs as a result of the growth in AI. Alberta, however, has a large amount of natural gas that is sold at a substantial discount to U.S. benchmark prices.

The cold climate of the province makes it more cost-effective to cool massive supercomputers and data centers.

Alberta's 20 small and mid-sized data centers already draw energy from its grid, which is powered 60% by natural gas. The government of Alberta is giving the option for new developers to build their power sources in order to avoid limitations on power capacity.

Meta announced Wednesday that it would fully fund the new generation and grid infrastructure of?its Alberta Data Center, which will use about as much energy as 800,000 households. The company is partnering with Alberta's Pembina Pipeline which announced last weekend that it would go ahead with its Greenlight Electricity Centre. This new natural gas-fired energy-generation facility will be in service in Sturgeon County by late 2030. Meta and Pembina have a long-term agreement for tolls.

According to Pembina the project will require around 150 million cubic foot per day of natural gas. This will help create demand for Western Canadian producers of?natural gas. The Canadian government announced an AI strategy in late October that suggested the growth of new data centers would be aided by Canada's clean electricity grid. This grid is powered mostly by renewables and low emission power sources.

The vast majority of data centers in Canada that are currently being planned for are in Alberta. This province is relying heavily on natural gas, which means its electricity grid emits emissions five times higher than the average. (Reporting and editing by Nick Zieminski in Calgary)

(source: Reuters)