Alberta premier offers reassurances on massive Meta data centre during radio show

The facility, shown in this rendered image, will be a one-gigawatt, nearly 270,000-square-metre data centre powered by a natural gas-fired plant. Meta, the tech giant behind Facebook and Instagram, says it's building a new AI date centre in Sturgeon County, Alberta. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout - Sturgeon Data Centre (Mandatory Credit)

Danielle Smith spent much of her Saturday call-in radio show reassuring Albertans about tech giant Meta’s plan to build a massive data centre in the province.

The premier told concerned callers that the $13-billion-plus data centre north of Edmonton will not increase their utility bills, nor strain the water supply.

Smith says Alberta’s grid operator will use surplus energy to power the centre until the Greenlight Electricity Centre builds a new natural gas-fired plant to start powering it in 2030.

She says the centre will use the same amount of water used by a golf course and features a closed-loop water cooling system so it won’t draw water from the surrounding area.

The tech giant behind Facebook announced the one-gigawatt data centre in Sturgeon County this week.

It has said it will also spend $60 million to improve local infrastructure, such as roads and water systems.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2026.

The Canadian Press