Meta to build data ​centre in Canada

The 1-gigawatt data centre, which will be built with the ability to scale up to 1.8 gigawatts, represents a total investment of $9.17 billion

Tech company Meta announced Wednesday it will build a massive data ​centre in central Alberta, the company’s first in Canada, as it rapidly builds out computing capacity to support the worldwide AI ‌boom.

The 1-gigawatt data centre, which will be built with the ability to scale up to 1.8 gigawatts, will be located in Sturgeon County and represents a total investment of C$13 billion, or $9.17 billion, Meta said.

Meta has doubled down on AI, pledging hundreds of billions of dollars to build large AI data centres in the U.S. The Alberta announcement represents ​the company’s 33rd data centre worldwide.

Executives made the announcement in Calgary alongside Premier Danielle Smith and other Alberta government officials, who have ​spent several years courting Silicon Valley tech companies with the aim of spurring a large-scale investment in the oil-and-gas province.

Alberta’s ⁠technology minister, Nate Glubish, told reporters there are currently several other gigawatt-scale data centre proposals in various stages of development in the province.

This is ​the first of its kind, the first of its size, the first of its scale, but it won’t be the last, Glubish said.

Meta, like other tech ​companies, is facing rapidly expanding power needs due to the growth of AI, and Alberta is rich in natural gas which sells at a significant discount to the U.S. benchmark.

The province’s cold climate also makes cooling the massive super-computers and related data centre infrastructure more cost-efficient.

Meta said Wednesday it will fully fund new generation and grid infrastructure for its Alberta data centre, which will consume about ‌as much ⁠electricity as 800,000 homes.

Gary Demasi, Meta’s vice president for data centre development, said the company will offset that electricity use by investing in clean and renewable energy.

He also said the data centre will use a closed-loop liquid cooling system, meaning its total water use will be less than that of a typical golf course.

The company has partnered with Alberta-based Pembina Pipeline, which announced last week it will go ahead with its Greenlight Electricity Centre, a new natural ​gas-fired power-generation facility in Sturgeon County ​which will be in service in ⁠late 2030 and with which Meta has a long-term tolling agreement.

Until that project is operational and for the next decade, Alberta-based power producer Capital Power will provide 250 megawatts of electricity for the site using its existing natural gas-fired fleet.