What does Meta’s data centre mean for Albertans?
By Iebe Theunissen, August 6 2026—
On July 8, tech giant Meta and the Alberta government announced plans for a one-gigawatt, $13-billion data centre to be built in Sturgeon County, just north of Edmonton.
The project comes amid growing interest from tech companies looking to Alberta as a new frontier for the development of AI infrastructure. Projects similar to the Meta data centre have been proposed near communities like Olds, prompting concern from residents.
However these concerns extend even beyond Alberta.
A Leger poll recently found that four in five Albertans and around 80 per cent of Canadians are concerned about the possible effects of AI data centres on their electricity bills and the environment.
Christine Cao, an assistant professor in the departments of Sustainable Systems and Electrical and Software Engineering at the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering, shared insights into these concerns.
“We are seeing the wildfire season […] start earlier every single year. It’s a sign of climate change,” Cao said in an interview with the Gauntlet. “Building a massive data centre and a massive natural gas generator to provide power to it is a sign that we are prioritizing our economics of this province over the fact we should be more considerate of the Earth.”
Meta’s data centre will be built alongside a $4.6-billion natural gas-fired power plant capable of producing 932 megawatts, expected to begin operation a few years after the data centre has already begun running and using power.
Natural gas-fired plants are commonly used for AI data centres as it addresses key concerns of keeping stable and consistent baseload power, which is the minimum steady power needed during a certain period of time.
“The thing with using gas-fired power plants is it’s the path of least resistance in terms of providing a very high amount but very stable baseload power,” Cao stated. “Power generation methods such as wind and solar […] are more intermittent.”
When asked about the state of AI regulation in Alberta, Cao said “We don’t have good regulatory processes for the end of life of a project […] even during operation, we don’t really have a good way of protecting the folks in northern Edmonton if they are affected.”
Cao also expressed concern around a lack of noise pollution regulation, an issue that has been widely reported near data centres.
The one-gigawatt power usage of the data centre is a main driver of the concerns surrounding the environmental and energy usage of the project. For comparison, Calgary uses around 1.8 gigawatts on average.
Albertans already have some of the highest residential energy costs in the country. Some companies have predicted a near tripling in Alberta’s energy costs from these data centre projects, but Cao says it isn’t that simple.
“We don’t know for a fact how much putting massive data centres into the grid mix will alter the dollar per kilowatt-hour cost of electricity because we don’t know what kind of contract they will have with the [Alberta Electric System Operator],” she said. “A lot of unknowns.”
Meta has promised to fund and offset the power usage of the data centre.
But because the power grid is a public good, according to Cao, “If they do end up needing to build out these massive high-voltage transmission lines to the new data centre projects, then we’re all paying for it,” she said.
For students graduating and entering the workforce in fields related to projects like this, particularly tech and engineering, job growth is a key consideration.
Meta’s press release regarding the data centre promised the creation of 3,000 construction jobs and 300 operational jobs. Cao said it remains unclear how the project would lead to jobs for experts in the tech and engineering fields.
“In terms of operating the data centre, you don’t really need that many skilled labourers,” said Cao. “I am not seeing the clearest link between having a data centre in Alberta to increasing our capacity to do AI research, AI innovation and AI technology development.”
Cao also noted that there is no commitment to research funding of any sort in the press release from Meta, which could potentially help technological growth in Alberta.
AI’s rapid growth has also sparked debate over other concerns, including its role in education and the mining of critical minerals needed for these projects in countries like the Philippines.
“There [are] a lot of ethical and moral considerations that all engineers are facing at the moment […] of using these types of systems,” Cao said. “All of us across every sector […] are dealing with something we have never had to confront.”