Meta announced Wednesday it will build a massive 1-gigawatt AI data centre in Sturgeon County, Alberta, north of Edmonton, representing an investment of more than $13 billion Canadian and marking the company's first data centre in Canada. Executives made the announcement in Calgary alongside Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, capping more than two years of provincial courtship aimed at landing a major Silicon Valley investment.
The scale is difficult to overstate. The facility will draw roughly as much electricity as the city of Edmonton itself, which uses about 1.4 gigawatts, and will be built on 1,750 acres, well over the size of Vancouver's Stanley Park. It becomes Meta's 33rd data centre globally and the largest in Canadian history.
Alberta's Energy Play
To power the facility, Pembina Pipeline Corporation, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, and Kineticor Asset Management are building a separate $4.6 billion natural gas plant in Sturgeon County called the Greenlight Electricity Centre. Meta doesn't own the plant, it buys power from it under a long-term tolling agreement. Alberta's regulatory approach is distinct from most jurisdictions competing for AI investment. The province requires large data centres to bring their own power generation rather than drawing primarily from the public grid, a model designed to protect grid reliability and consumer prices.
That approach cuts both ways. Alberta's abundant natural gas gives developers a fast, reliable power source, but it also means the emissions intensity of electricity powering this data centre sits well above the national average, since most of Canada's data centre growth elsewhere is expected to lean on a cleaner, renewable-heavy grid. Meta says it aims to match its energy use with clean power over time and is screening potential clean-energy projects in the region to offset consumption.
Not Every Alberta Project Gets a Green Light
This deal lands against a more complicated backdrop for data centre development in Canada. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew rejected a large-scale data centre proposal south of Winnipeg in June, citing a big threat to the environment without much economic benefit. The Alberta Utilities Commission separately rejected an application for a development in the town of Olds earlier this year over what it called significant deficiencies.
Why This Matters for Business
I've advised companies on AI adoption for four years, and the physical infrastructure race rarely gets the attention it deserves compared to model releases. This deal is a clear signal that hyperscalers are willing to co-locate directly with energy production rather than wait for grid capacity to catch up, a pattern that will likely repeat across other energy-rich regions. Meta's project will support over 3,000 construction jobs and roughly 300 permanent operational roles, with $60 million earmarked for local infrastructure improvements.
For Canadian businesses, this signals growing domestic AI compute capacity, which could eventually mean better latency, more localized cloud options, and increased competition for data centre-adjacent services. Watch whether other hyperscalers follow Meta's lead into Alberta's industrial heartland, or whether community and environmental pushback in places like Manitoba slows the broader Canadian buildout.
