Meta’s AI data centre: A costly benefit?

It is 2030, and the residents of Sturgeon County once again wake up to the hum of their new neighbour, one of Canada’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) data centres. With it now becoming a symbol of difficulty, it was once a promising ray of hope for the region. With billions in investments, it seems a sure-fire way of bringing more jobs. But the constant hum, growing electricity demands, and environmental trade-offs have left residents questioning whether the benefits were worth the cost.

Back to the current day, the Government of Alberta recently announced Meta’s record-breaking $13 billion investment to build a new AI data centre in Sturgeon County in 2027. To support the facility’s massive electricity demands, the province has given the green light to build the Greenlight Electricity Centre, a new natural gas power plant expected to be operational by 2030. While these major projects bring in multiple benefits to the community and the province as a whole, industry experts and the residents have already voiced their concerns about the project’s impact in the long run.

Meta’s AI data centre represents a significant economic opportunity for Alberta, offering investment, job creation, and the potential to establish the province as the leader in AI. The project, however, raises massive concerns about whether its benefits justify its long-term costs. Examples of existing data centres around the world, along with the facility’s massive electricity demands, environmental impacts from the power plant, and relatively limited permanent employment compared to its scale, make one question whether Alberta is gaining as much as it is giving up.

Meta’s investment represents a major opportunity for Alberta to establish itself as a destination for the future of AI and technology development. Along with thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of permanent jobs, the project is expected to generate an annual provincial revenue of $250 million and contribute $60 million towards local infrastructure improvements. Due to the cold climate, Meta set up a data centre in Luleå, Sweden, to cut on cooling demands. For the same reasons, the colder climate in Alberta also makes it an attractive location for companies like Meta. Meanwhile, its Prineville, Oregon, facility helped diversify the local economy and attract further technology investment to the region.

It is also these facilities that reveal the flip side of such data centres, including rapid pressure on the electricity grids, resource consumption, water usage, and questions surrounding their long-term benefits for local communities. In Ireland, rapidly expanding data centres are placing increasing pressure on the country’s electrical grid, raising concerns about whether the energy infrastructure can keep up with growing demand. In addition to that, similar projects around the world have faced criticism over the gap between the scale of the facilities and the number of permanent jobs they create.

Alberta now faces a similar challenge. Once fully expanded, Meta’s AI data centre is expected to require up to 1.8 gigawatts of electricity, more than the entire city of Calgary consumes. Alberta’s government has stated that the province’s existing grid has enough available capacity to support Meta’s data centre when it begins operation, with the planned Greenlight Electricity Centre expected to provide the necessary power once it becomes operational. However, meeting the energy demands comes with environmental impacts. While Meta has committed to using a closed-loop cooling system that consumes significantly less water than traditional data centres, the facility will ultimately rely on the new natural gas power plant for its long-term energy needs. Although natural gas produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than coal, it still contributes a significant amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. 

The project, backed by data from its existing counterparts, promises billions in investment and local infrastructure development. However, its long-term demands on the electricity grid and environmental impacts spark skepticism. As Alberta continues to pursue further data centre investments, it should establish stronger requirements for companies to adopt water- and electricity-efficient technologies, following examples from jurisdictions such as Singapore that have prioritized sustainability in data centre development. This reduces reliance on fossil fuels and ensures meeting demand without affecting reliability and affordability for residents.