- What A “hyperscale” data-centre facility is proposed for the municipality of Greenview
- Why Alberta has abundant skilled labour and cheap power
- What next The Alberta government wants to attract $100bn of data-centre investments
Alberta increasingly is gaining the attention of data-centre investors, who traditionally are focused on the more built-up Southern Ontario and Québec markets.
This week, a public-private partnership announced plans to build a sprawling “hyperscale” data-centre facility in the tiny municipality of Greenview, in western Alberta.
The Greenview announcement comes on the heels of another data-centre venture announced in late October, when eStruxture Data Centers revealed it will construct a 90-megawatt facility in Calgary at a cost of $750m. The Calgary data centre is expected to open in 2026. And earlier this year, Amazon Web Services opened a new data centre in Calgary dedicated to cloud storage.
Market pros say the likes of Google and Microsoft are looking westward for potential new data-centre facilities.
The growing interest suggests Alberta, while still dwarfed by the GTA and Greater Montréal for data-centre interest, increasingly is gaining momentum for data-centre investment. Factors identified include an inflow of skilled labour as a result of an ongoing population boom, abundant renewable and nonrenewable energy sources, and the potential for data centres to drive economic growth.
The buy-in from the Alberta government in particular – which has announced its intention to drive $100bn in future data-centre investment to the province – is crucial for data-centre operators looking to secure the necessary amount of power needed over a long period.
“You are contracting for 30 years of power usage, and you’re guaranteeing that if you get the power, you will use it,” one data-centre analyst told Green Street News.
The Greenview proposal, known as Wonder Valley, is a partnership between a private venture – whose public face is entrepreneur and media personality Kevin O’Leary – and the Greenview municipal government. The new facility is part of the proposal, which is a multi-phase development that is slated to last five to 10 years within an established 2,000-acre industrial park in the municipality.
If fully built out, O’Leary claims the new data centre will be able to offer 7.5 gigawatts of power, which would require the construction of 58 new buildings in order to support the necessary infrastructure. The first phase of the Greenview project is promised to offer 1.4 gigawatts of power generated through natural-gas and geothermal energy generation.
Initial development costs for the project are expected to max out at US$2bn (C$2.8 billion).
