In case you missed it, Meta just announced that they’re building a $13 billion, gigawatt-scale data centre in Alberta, just north of Edmonton.
It’s the first major data centre in Canada. Albertan project proponents have been advocating for investment on this scale for years. It’s a big deal, and news outlets are right to treat it as such.
That said, there’s a piece of the story that seems to be slipping through the cracks.
Where are we getting the power for this massive data centre? The data centre requires about as much electricity as 800,000 homes would, which is a lot. Where does the electricity come from?
This is where an unsung hero comes in: the Greenlight Electricity Centre.
The Greenlight project is a $4.6 billion, 932 megawatt gas-fired electricity generation plant that will provide Meta’s data centre with most of the electricity it needs to power our Instagram Reels algorithms, keep our Facebook Marketplace listings active, and execute whatever other AI-based business activities Meta is up to.
Greenlight is owned by Pembina Pipeline (47.5%), Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners (47.5%), and Kineticor Asset Management (5%) – two of which are Canadian.
Without a companion power supply project, there’s no way Meta’s data centre would be built.
It’s common knowledge at this point that a main sticking point in building more data centres is electricity grid capacity. The bottom line is this: without a ton of power to supply the data centres, they won’t be approved or built, whether in Canada or elsewhere.
In light of this reality, it sure is a good thing power is something Canada’s good at, eh?
In a land of abundant oil and gas reserves, thousands of waterways that provide hydroelectricity, and, in the words of The Chicks, “wide open spaces,” large-scale data centres can find the electricity they need.
In the context of Meta’s new data centre and the Greenlight project, central Alberta is a strategic location that plays to Alberta’s strength – oil and gas. Alberta produces most of the country’s natural gas, which has historically meant that local natural gas prices remain relatively low.
The Greenlight facility will be able to pipe in natural gas originating from the Montney or the Duvernay plays, convert it to electricity, and transmit it to the data centre at relatively low cost. In doing so, the data centre won’t place a strain on the existing electricity grid in Alberta, with the idea that no costs are passed on to consumers.
Canadian energy has enabled Meta’s multi-billion-dollar data centre to come to Alberta. Cheap and accessible western Canadian natural gas has created an attractive investment climate for data-hungry companies.
We’re looking at thousands of new jobs for the Meta data centre, the Greenlight project, and related infrastructure upgrades. All made possible by the oft-ignored Canadian energy sector.
And this is just the beginning.
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The Montney Formation can satisfy this demand with some of the world’s most sustainably produced and exported natural gas and LNG, while at the same time yielding jobs and prosperity