Meta Announces First Canadian Data Centre to Be Built North of Edmonton ⇥ about.fb.com

Meta:

Once complete, our Sturgeon County data center will represent an investment of more than CAD $13 billion. We anticipate approximately 3,000 construction workers will be onsite at the peak of construction, and the data center will support more than 300 operational jobs.

[…]

As with all of our data centers, this data center’s electricity use will be matched with 100% clean and renewable energy.

As for the data centre itself, however…

Chris Varcoe, Calgary Herald:

Last week, Calgary-based Pembina Pipelines, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor announced they will build a new 932-megawatt (MW) gas-fired power generation facility in Sturgeon County to power the data centre, although they didn’t identify a customer at the time.

Chalk up another questionable outcome for the environmental record. Meta makes a lot of big promises in this news release and in an interview for Varcoe’s column, but I question whether the company can be adequately monitored, particularly by this provincial government.