Meta will build a 1-gigawatt AI data center in Sturgeon County, Alberta, the company’s first in Canada and, by its own account, the largest outside the United States. Meta estimates the investment at more than $13 billion Canadian dollars, or approximately $9.2 billion in US dollars.
The company confirmed the project on Wednesday, July 8, at a press conference in Calgary, where Gary DeMasi, Meta’s vice president of data center strategy and development, appeared alongside Alberta Premier Daniel Smith.
As reported by EnergyNow, Gary DeMasi said:
We’re excited to announce that Sturgeon County, Alberta, will be home to Meta’s newest data centre.
The site is located about 35 kilometers north of Edmonton in Alberta’s industrial heartland, an area zoned for heavy industry. It will span approximately 2.9 million square feet and will be ranked as Meta’s 33rd data center worldwide, joining a fleet that already includes facilities in Sweden, Ireland, Denmark and Singapore.
Meta describes Campus as optimized for the AI workloads behind products used by billions of people. As Cryptopolitan reported earlierThe company plans to spend up to $135 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, nearly double the $72 billion it spent in 2025.
Alberta is implementing its largest project since the oil sands era
Meta’s newsroom lists about 3,000 construction workers at peak construction and more than 300 permanent operational jobs, plus nearly C$60 million for local road and water infrastructure. The Alberta government puts the revenue more broadly: an estimated $250 million annually from taxes, natural gas royalties, and industry fees, according to Alberta culture And energy now.
Technology Minister Nate Glubish linked the win to a deliberate campaign. He said he first hired a Meta data center team in Silicon Valley about two years ago, when the company had not considered the boycott. “It didn’t happen by accident, it happened on purpose,” Globish said.
In terms of size, reports indicate the campus will be the largest capital project in the county since the $17 billion Fort Hills oil sands mine. The $13 billion covers buildings, not the AI chips inside them. Carson Curl, an analyst at Enverus, said the project could ultimately generate more than $75 billion in total spending once chips and networking equipment are counted.
Gas power has become the main trade-off for the Meta AI Campus
Power for the data center will come from Alberta Grid and an adjacent gas plant. This gas plant, called the Greenlight Electric Center, is a $4.6 billion stand-alone facility owned by Pembina Pipeline, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor. Meta does not own the plant, but only buys the energy it generates.
The announcement also solved a little mystery: When the Greenlight factory got the green light to move forward on July 2, its backers described the buyer as only one “major data center” customer, Culture Alberta reported. Meta is that client. The plant is scheduled to start operating in the second half of 2030.
The facility will require up to 800,000 homes to power, with up to 970 megawatts from the grid, as well as up to 1,800 megawatts of on-site gas generation when its construction is complete, according to reports. Reliance on gas is central to the boycott’s argument, and also a source of contention.
Alberta’s grid is much more carbon intensive than Canada’s national average. Meta says it will match its electricity use with 100% clean, renewable energy, and is examining clean energy projects in the region to offset consumption.
The Pembina Institute, a clean energy think tank unrelated to the pipeline company, warned that the additional demand for gas means household electricity costs will continue to rise in the coming years.
Globish argued the opposite on transportation, saying Meta’s roughly $100 million-a-year transportation fee would spread fixed costs over a larger number of users and reduce transportation fees for other Albertans by up to six per cent.
Meta: “Dry cooling will reduce water use”
As for water, the site will use a closed-loop liquid cooling system with dry cooling, without using water at all for cooling purposes, Meta says. Its own newsroom and CBC News.
Water use on site will be limited to domestic needs, fire safety and equipment maintenance.
Our annual water use is actually less than that of a typical golf course in Alberta.
Meta also pledged to be water positive by 2030, and in Alberta, to help preserve 200 acres of grasslands, trees and wetlands in the North Saskatchewan River watershed.
