Meta's Canadian AI data center integrates renewable energy and water cooling, modeling a sustainability pathway that de-risks environmental permitting for large-scale AI buildout.
Canada's expansion as an artificial intelligence infrastructure market received its strongest endorsement on July 8, when Meta broke ground on a data center campus representing an investment of more than C$13 billion. Located in Sturgeon County north of Edmonton, this will be Meta's first Canadian data center and its 33rd facility globally. Planned initially at 1 GW of power capacity, the AI-optimized campus could eventually scale to 1.8 GW, positioning it among the largest data center developments under construction anywhere outside the United States.
The project will employ approximately 3,000 construction workers at peak activity, with more than 300 permanent employees operating the campus after completion. Meta is also committing approximately C$60 million to improvements involving local roads, water systems and community infrastructure.
The Meta announcement illustrates a fundamental shift in Canadian data center construction. Rather than selecting a building site and applying for an ordinary utility connection, Meta and its partners have spent years coordinating the data center with a purpose-built 932 MW generating station, grid upgrades and long-term natural-gas transportation agreements. The project effectively combines a data center, power plant and infrastructure development program into a single construction ecosystem.
Alberta's major-project registry estimates a roughly three-year construction period. That timeline will require sustained deployment of skilled trades, construction management personnel, engineering teams and mission-critical specialists. The work extends far beyond data halls to include multiple computing buildings, substations, utility yards, backup power systems, administrative space, security facilities, equipment staging areas and miles of internal electrical, mechanical and fiber infrastructure.
AI systems impose requirements that distinguish this campus from older cloud or enterprise data centers. GPU clusters concentrate far more power in each rack, creating higher heat loads and requiring larger electrical feeds, more extensive busway systems and increasingly sophisticated liquid-cooling networks. The Sturgeon County facility will use closed-loop liquid cooling supported by dry cooling, with no water consumption during normal operation. Water use will be limited primarily to domestic requirements, fire protection and equipment maintenance.
That design addresses one of the most frequent concerns surrounding large AI campuses: the potential use of millions of gallons of water. Eliminating operational cooling-water consumption substantially changes the water discussion compared with AI facilities that depend on cooling towers, though it does not eliminate the project's broader environmental footprint. Dry cooling can require more equipment and may use more electricity under certain weather conditions than evaporative systems, but Alberta's comparatively cool climate gives designers an opportunity to use low outside-air temperatures to improve heat-rejection efficiency during much of the year.
The project's industrial location is another important design choice. The site lies within Alberta's Industrial Heartland, a designated development zone northeast of Edmonton that already contains pipelines, energy facilities, petrochemical plants and heavy industrial infrastructure. The selected property is not being used for residential development, food production or farming, minimizing potential community concerns for a development of this scale. Locating the campus within an established industrial corridor gives Meta access to infrastructure that would be difficult to reproduce at a greenfield site near a major city and makes it possible to colocate the data center with the generating capacity required to operate it.
Six days before Meta's July 8 announcement, Pembina Pipeline and its partners announced a positive final investment decision on the Greenlight Electricity Centre—a 932 MW combined-cycle natural-gas generating facility to be built in the same Sturgeon County industrial area. Meta confirmed that Greenlight would supply its Canadian campus. The Greenlight partners have entered into a long-term agreement to provide 932 MW of dedicated capacity to the data center under a tolling agreement, in which the customer makes capacity payments while covering fuel, operations and maintenance costs.
Greenlight is owned by Pembina and Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, each holding 47.5%, and Kineticor, which owns the remaining 5%. The project carries an estimated capital cost of approximately C$4 billion, rising to approximately C$4.6 billion when construction interest and financing costs are included. The plant is scheduled to begin service during the second half of 2030. Pembina reports that all major regulatory approvals have been obtained and approximately 85% of project costs have been de-risked through fixed-price agreements.
Aecon and Técnicas Reunidas have been selected for engineering, procurement and construction under a fixed-price agreement. Siemens Energy will supply two SGT6-8000H gas turbines, two steam turbines and associated generators. The combined-cycle configuration will use waste heat from the gas turbines to produce steam and generate additional electricity, increasing efficiency compared with a simple-cycle gas plant. Greenlight is expected to consume approximately 150 million cubic feet of natural gas each day, with transportation capacity secured through pipeline systems serving the Alberta region.
The site has already been permitted for potential expansion to 1,864 MW, a figure that closely corresponds to Meta's ability to expand the data center from 1 GW to as much as 1.8 GW, suggesting that both the generating plant and computing campus are being planned with a second major construction phase in mind.
The arrangement represents Alberta's emerging "bring your own power" model for large data centers. Rather than requiring the provincial grid to supply the full load, developers finance new generation and the infrastructure required to connect or support their projects. Meta will pay the full cost of the new generation and grid infrastructure associated with the campus, working with Capital Power, AltaLink, and the Alberta Electric System Operator. Capital Power has entered into a long-term agreement to provide 250 MW from its existing Alberta generation fleet beginning in the second half of 2028, before Greenlight enters service.
Meta said its electricity consumption will be matched with clean and renewable energy purchases, although the physical electricity serving much of the campus will be generated from natural gas. The distinction between physical power and renewable-energy matching is important: renewable contracts or certificates may offset annual electricity consumption on an accounting basis, but they do not make the colocated gas-fired generating station carbon-free.
Alberta offers speed, land and abundant natural gas, but its electricity system has considerably higher emissions intensity than hydro-dominated systems in Quebec, British Columbia and Manitoba. Reuters reported in June that the vast majority of Canada's planned hyperscale capacity was concentrating in Alberta even though the province's grid emissions intensity was nearly five times the national average. In November 2025, Ottawa and Alberta agreed to suspend application of the federal Clean Electricity Regulations in the province while negotiating a new industrial carbon-pricing arrangement.