Researchers are raising concerns about Bell Canada’s plans to build a natural gas energy system to power a significant portion of its recently announced expansion to a 1.2-gigawatt data centre southeast of Regina. Originally announced to be a 300-megawatt campus, the Government of Saskatchewan allowed Bell Canada (BCE) to tap into SaskPower’s grid for its baseload power. However, a quadrupling of size and scope to 1.2-gigawatts – announced last month – means the company is required to source its own power for the additional 900 megawatts under Saskatchewan’s Data Centre Framework. “Bringing your own energy will require natural gas generated energy,” said BCE group president of Business Markets, Bell Cyber, AI Fabric & Ateko John Watson on Thursday. According to BCE, this means building and operating its own natural gas fired power plant on or near the site in the RM of Sherwood. “This site is naturally located with natural gas pipelines, which is quite beneficial,” added Watson. “Bring your own energy necessitates a natural gas powered energy system. We will require a system to be built, likely with a partner.” Policy experts are not as convinced about the plan. Simon Enoch, a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says there are very few models for Bell to follow in this instance, because it’s never happened before in Saskatchewan. “We really haven’t seen a project of this scale before,” he told CTV News. “There really are very few facilities that consume this amount of energy. At its full amount of 1.2GW, you’re talking about a third of what the province consumes as a province for one single facility; that’s a massive amount of energy.” “Nine hundred megawatts of gas generation on site: that will be the largest gas generating plant in Saskatchewan, beside the largest data center in Saskatchewan. It will be an enormous facility. What will be the consequences of that?” Enoch asked. While BCE’s centre near Regina may be a first in the province, there are similar situations in Western Canada. A data centre in Sturgeon County, Alta., built by Meta, will also be powered by its own natural gas power plant. Still under construction, Meta says it will match natural gas generation with renewables. “In terms of overall scale and amount of power that’s required, [the two data centres] are very similar in the sense of natural gas really being the kind of driving force here,” said Pembina Institute’s director of electricity David Pickup in an interview with CTV News. “A little bit of a difference in terms of how the grid connection works.” Pickup says the data centres are turning to natural gas in these cases because of availability and cost. He added the Meta data centre risks adding up to $460 to Albertans’ household energy bills and – given their similarities – a similar pattern which is possible in Saskatchewan. “That is a significant potential increase,” Pickup said. “That should be a concern to many people. Electricity is becoming such a big issue when it comes to affordability.” To mitigate impacts, he would like to see data centre developers – like BCE – bring more diversity for their power generation. “Natural gas can be an option here, but it shouldn’t be the only option being considered,” Pickup added. “Whether that is powering the grid more broadly, or these data centres themselves, it’s going to take an all of the above approach.” Enoch wanted to see BCE come out with more comprehensive impact assessments, to ease concerns from residents in Regina and surrounding areas. “What will be the greenhouse gas emissions? What would be the noise emissions? What will be the effect on electricity rates?” he questioned. “Once again, a whole host of questions given the size of this project that haven’t been answered. And for residents, more questions than answers.” As part of a construction update Thursday, Watson admitted Bell also does not have the full details of what its natural gas plant may look like once operational. “There are folks who support the province today,” he told reporters. “We’re engaging all of them to understand what they can do and what they would recommend.” The Bell executive did say the energy system will follow all required emissions regulations and still needs more approvals before moving forward. “Given the nature of this, and the recency of the announcement, we don’t have timelines today,” Watson added. CTV News, CP24 and BNN Bloomberg are divisions of Bell Media, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of BCE Inc.
