Dozens protest Meta data centre planned for county north of Edmonton

Dozens of people are protesting tech giant Meta’s plan to build its first Canadian data centre in a county north of Edmonton.

Ben Baril is the 20-year-old organizer of the protest in Morinville, a town in Sturgeon County, where the tech giant behind Facebook announced last month it’s building its massive one-gigawatt data centre.

Baril says the $13-billion-plus facility will strain Alberta’s water supply and energy grid, and contribute to the climate crisis in the future.

He says protesters are also against data centres across Canada because the expansion of artificial intelligence threatens jobs.

Meta has said the centre will be online in the next two to three years.

Premier Danielle Smith has said Alberta’s grid operator will use surplus energy to power the centre until a new natural gas-fired plant — called the Greenlight Electricity Centre — starts powering it in 2030.

Pembina Pipeline Corp., Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor Asset Management are behind the plant.