Protesters gathered in front of Calgary City Hall on Aug. 22 to protest the construction of AI data centres in Alberta.
Amid a large growth of AI technology in the province this year, some citizens are expressing their concerns over the infrastructure needed to power it; including its pressure on Alberta’s water supply, surrounding communities and the environment.
Alberta Anti-AI organizer Cameron Caughlin told the Gauntlet the protest was intended to draw attention to these concerns and push the provincial government to reconsider the development of AI data centres.
“AI data centres are coming to Alberta and a lot of them have not very good and eco-friendly building plans and it takes a lot away from the community,” Caughlin said. “If we can really bring people in and fight for not even just us, but for our fellow neighbours, even across from other cities and towns, I think that’s a really great step. So our main goal is to help limit data centres and for the government to pay attention and hear us that we don’t want this.”
Protesters were particularly concerned about the amount of water that data centres require for cooling.
“Some of them have an open cooling [system], some of them have closed, but they’ll still need cool water to cool in which clean water is aka our drinking water,” said Caughlin. “Calgary has done water restrictions every year [...] that would only get worse with these data centres."
Water use varies depending on the cooling technology used by individual data centres. Meta’s 1-gigawatt data centre in Sturgeon County will use a closed-loop water cooling system and is not expected to draw water from the surrounding area, according to Meta.
Challenges to claims that data centres will bring long-term employment and investment to Alberta were also a common theme from protesters.
Meta has said its data centre will create more than 3,000 construction jobs at peak construction and over 300 permanent operational jobs. Protesters at the demonstration argued that many of the jobs created will only be temporary.
“I would argue that it’s not bringing in jobs, mainly because these AI data centres are mainly supporting generative AI, and generative AI is taking away jobs,” Caughlin said. “We’re only making [a] majority short-term jobs, not long-term jobs.”
Shannon, a volunteer with Alberta Anti-AI, acknowledged that data centre construction will create jobs but questioned the long-term trade-off.
“It’s true that there will be jobs that come from the construction of these massive data centres,” Shannon said. “But at the same time, I guess I'm concerned that the trade-off isn’t worth it. What are we going to have to pay in exchange for these jobs? Are we going to have to pay to lose our land? Are we going to have to pay to lose our water?”
Shannon also questioned the broader effect of AI on employment, pointing to industries such as art and writing that they said are being affected by generative AI.
For some protesters, opposition to AI data centres extends beyond environmental impact.
Sam said they are concerned about its environmental and social effects, particularly the effects of proposed data centres on rural and Indigenous communities.
“I have a fundamental disagreement with generative AI, and I dislike the way that AI data centres [...] cause environmental racism and pollution,” Sam said. “It largely impacts smaller rural communities and Indigenous communities [...] where we're seeing the AI data centres [and] where they want to put them, they're largely going to pollute Indigenous reserves and also waterways to Indigenous reserves.”
The environmental impacts of data centres have also raised questions about how projects in Alberta are regulated by the provincial government. The Alberta government says data centres and the power plants that fuel them are assessed under the same environmental laws as other industrial developments. Projects must receive environmental approvals with legally binding conditions, while water use requires a licence under the Water Act. A formal Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is not automatically required for every data centre.
Brett, another participant at the demonstration, said they want to see more regulation of data centre development.
“I want to see more regulations. I want [the provincial government] to stop moving so fast on these things,” Brett said.
For more information on Alberta’s AI data centres strategy and the regulatory process for data centre development, visit the Government of Alberta’s website.
