EDMONTON, Alberta — The company that owns Facebook and Instagram, Meta, announced Wednesday that it intends to spend more than US$9.1 billion to construct its first artificial intelligence data center on Canadian soil — and the largest such facility it has ever built outside the United States.
The massive complex will be located in Sturgeon County, Alberta, and will draw its power from a natural gas-fired plant currently under development by a group of partners that includes Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Ltd.
Alberta’s Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish described the investment as “a big deal for Alberta,” pointing out that the province had deliberately crafted a regulatory environment designed to draw in data center development.
Alberta has been actively pursuing so-called hyperscale data centers as the worldwide appetite for artificial intelligence infrastructure continues to grow. However, the explosive expansion of AI technology has raised serious questions about the enormous quantities of electricity and water these facilities consume, along with the pressure they place on power grids and surrounding communities.
Because Alberta’s electrical grid lacks the capacity to support several large-scale AI data centers at once, provincial officials are focusing on projects that generate or secure their own power supply — which is exactly what Meta intends to do.
Meta stated that the data center will rely on a closed-loop cooling system, meaning it will not pull water from local sources. The company has also committed to spending US$42 million on nearby infrastructure improvements, covering items such as roads and water systems.
The power project behind the data center came into focus last week, when Pembina Pipeline, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, and Kineticor Asset Management announced they would move forward with the Greenlight Electricity Center in Sturgeon County. Meta was confirmed Wednesday as the end customer for that facility. The 932-megawatt plant is projected to come online during the second half of 2030.
