Meta will build its first data center in Canada, a 1-gigawatt artificial intelligence facility in Sturgeon County, Alberta, the company announced on July 8. The project represents a total investment of about $13 billion CAD, or roughly $9.2 billion USD, and will take two to three years to complete.
It is Meta’s 33rd data center globally and its largest outside the United States, spanning about 2.9 million square feet on 1,750 acres, with the ability to scale to 1.8 gigawatts. The company chose Alberta for its available energy, cold climate that eases cooling costs and a regulatory regime the provincial government has tailored to court big tech. Meta made the announcement in Calgary alongside Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
The most consequential detail is how the site will be powered. Rather than drawing solely on the grid, the data center will rely heavily on a dedicated $4.6 billion CAD natural gas plant, the Greenlight Electricity Centre, being built in Sturgeon County by Pembina Pipeline and partners under a long-term supply deal with Meta.
The plant will provide more than 900 megawatts and require roughly 150 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, creating fresh demand for Western Canadian gas producers. Meta says it will fully fund the new generation and grid infrastructure, cover its own electricity costs, and use a closed-loop liquid cooling system that consumes less water in a year than a typical Alberta golf course.
The Alberta deal reflects the intense competition among tech giants to secure power for AI, where electricity has become the binding constraint on data center growth. Alberta has aggressively marketed its gas resources and set up a fast-track “concierge” process to attract these projects; its grid operator now has 41 data center proposals representing 19.5 gigawatts of potential demand in its queue.
The province projects the Meta facility will generate at least $250 million CAD a year for Alberta and support more than 3,000 construction jobs, though only about 300 permanent roles once operational.
Why It Matters for Meta
The buildout comes as Meta faces investor skepticism about its AI strategy. The company has guided to as much as $145 billion in capital spending this year, yet its stock is down about 9% in 2026 while the Nasdaq has risen, and critics note it trails OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in model leadership without a clear revenue path beyond advertising.
That pressure helps explain a parallel move: Meta is reportedly planning a cloud business to sell excess AI compute and model access to third parties, which would give facilities like the Alberta site a way to generate revenue directly. The scale of the Alberta project signals Meta intends to keep spending aggressively regardless of the market’s doubts.
The Environmental Backlash
The reliance on natural gas has drawn sharp criticism. Alberta’s grid already has an emissions intensity nearly five times the national average because gas supplies about 60% of its power, cutting against Canada’s pitch that its largely clean grid should attract data centers.
The Pembina Institute, a clean-energy think tank, warned that adding generation on this scale could raise household electricity costs, though the province counters that Meta’s roughly $100 million in annual transmission fees could lower other Albertans’ charges.
Greenpeace called for a moratorium on mega-data centers until stronger environmental and human-rights protections are legislated. Meta says it aims to match its energy use with clean power and is screening regional clean-energy projects to offset the center’s consumption, but the immediate reality is a large new fossil-fueled load, underscoring the collision between the AI boom and climate goals.
