Meta $META broke ground Wednesday on its first data center in Canada, a 1-gigawatt facility in Sturgeon County, Alberta, that represents an investment of roughly $9 billion (CAD $13 billion), the company said.
Gary Demasi, Meta's vice president of data center development and strategy, said the Alberta facility ranks as the company's 33rd data center in its global fleet and will surpass all others outside the United States in size. At the height of construction activity, roughly 3,000 workers will be needed on site, and the completed facility is expected to sustain more than 300 permanent positions. The data center is designed to handle AI workloads for Meta's platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
Energy planning for the site involved partnerships with Greenlight Limited Partnership, Altalink, Capital Power, and the Alberta Electric System Operator, Meta said. Powering the facility — whose electricity draw is comparable to the combined usage of roughly 800,000 homes, according to Reuters — will be financed entirely by Meta, which is also covering the cost of connecting new generation capacity to the provincial grid. That power use will be matched with 100% clean and renewable energy, Meta said. A separate deal announced by Capital Power will deliver 250 megawatts to the project under a long-term supply contract, according to Bloomberg.
Supplying gas-fired power to the site will be the Greenlight Electricity Centre, a $3.2 billion generation project being developed by Pembina Pipeline and its partners; Meta holds a long-term tolling agreement with the plant, which is slated to come online by the end of 2030.
Rather than drawing on water for cooling, the facility relies on a closed-loop, liquid-cooled design with dry cooling towers. Beyond that system, on-site water consumption will be confined to routine needs such as domestic use, fire suppression, and maintaining equipment, Meta said.
Meta is also committing roughly CAD $60 million to local infrastructure improvements, including roads and water infrastructure, and plans to launch a community grants program for local nonprofits, the company said.
At a Wednesday news conference in Calgary, Premier Danielle Smith appeared with Meta executives to mark the announcement, saying Alberta has drawn up to CAD $200 billion in prospective data center investment. Alberta Technology Minister Nate Glubish said several other gigawatt-scale data center proposals are in various stages of development in the province.
Separately, Meta has been drawing up plans for a cloud computing venture under which businesses could purchase access to AI models and computing resources running on the company's own servers. The Alberta facility fits into a broader push by Meta to rapidly expand its computing infrastructure as it competes with cloud providers including Alphabet $GOOGL, Microsoft $MSFT, and Amazon $AMZN. The company's projected capital expenditure budget for the year reaches as high as $145 billion, according to CNBC.