Meta plans C$13 billion AI data center in Alberta

Meta is building a C$13 billion artificial intelligence data center in Sturgeon County, Alberta, a 1-gigawatt campus that the company said can scale to 1.8 gigawatts. The project is Meta’s first data center in Canada and its 33rd worldwide, placing Alberta squarely in the race to host the next wave of compute-heavy AI infrastructure.

The site, northeast of Edmonton, is designed around a closed-loop, liquid-cooled system with dry cooling, which Meta said will eliminate ongoing operational water use. Power will come from both the grid and on-site natural-gas generation, a mix that reflects the basic arithmetic of the AI boom: massive server farms need uninterrupted electricity, and Alberta has built its pitch around abundant gas, available land and a colder climate that lowers cooling costs.

Meta said the project will create more than 3,000 construction jobs at peak and support more than 300 operational jobs once the campus is running. The company also said it will put about C$60 million into local infrastructure improvements and community funding, while Alberta officials said the project could generate about C$250 million a year in benefits through royalties, taxes, levies and fees.

Premier Danielle Smith cast the investment as a signal that Alberta wants to shape the new industrial geography of AI. “Lead rather than follow,” she said, as provincial leaders framed the deal as evidence that the province can pair energy supply with fast permitting and large-scale development. Alberta technology minister Nate Glubish called it “the first of its kind, the first of its size, the first of its scale,” and suggested it would not be the last.

The project is tied to a larger power buildout. Alberta and Sturgeon County said the Meta campus will pair with Project Greenlight, a C$4.6 billion, 970-megawatt natural-gas-fired generation facility backed by Pembina Pipeline Corporation, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor. Officials say that arrangement could reduce transmission costs on Albertans’ power bills by up to 6 percent, though the same structure puts more of the data center’s energy burden close to the grid and raises the stakes for how costs are allocated.

TD Economics has warned that Alberta’s available grid capacity for new data centers is limited. In its June 16 note, the firm said the first phase of the AESO large-load integration program offers 1.2 gigawatts for data centers, less than 6 percent of the capacity being sought, and said gas turbine shortages and higher capital costs could slow new generation.

The deal has already drawn fire from clean-energy advocates. The Pembina Institute said Alberta’s decision to power new data centers with gas will drive up consumer costs, underscoring how the AI buildout is turning into a regional contest over land, power, regulation and who captures the economic gains from compute.