When O’Leary (of Dragon’s Den fame) first announced the project a year and a half ago alongside municipal and provincial representatives, they described the project as “the world’s largest AI Data Centre Industrial Park.” The project is slated to need about 7.5 GW of power when fully built.
That’s roughly seven times the amount of electricity generated by the Site C dam in northern BC.
Much of that power is poised to come from natural gas. The company’s initial announcements about the project claimed it would use geothermal power and gas. However, emails _Canada’s National Observer _obtained through a Freedom of Information request from the municipality where the project is located suggest O’Leary’s company rapidly ditched plans for geothermal power in favour of exclusively using natural gas.
If the project is entirely powered by natural gas and doesn’t capture any of those emissions, it will set Canada back 20 years in carbon emissions reductions and wipe out the reductions gained by phasing out coal, according to Will Noel, senior analyst with the Pembina Institute’s electricity team.
Ottawa’s decision to roll back federal climate rules for Alberta’s AI industry comes after intense lobbying efforts by Capital Power, an Alberta electricity company building a gas-powered AI data centre. And Evan Solomon, Canada’s AI minister, has only met with mining and energy companies about the environmental impacts of AI data centres — but so far has ignored environmental groups.
What the actual fuck is wrong with Albertans?
forever conservative government
Looking up to the US and years of brainwashing.
Not just Albertans as you will literally see a post on r/britishcolumbia worried about this upcoming fire season and heatwaves and then the next post is applauding Carney’s push to build more LNG terminals to extract and ship even more methane which is horrible for the environment despite the greenwashing, but if you oppose, you gets defensive, belligerent attacks about not supporting Canada’s sovereignty and such BS. We get what we sow.
Hey now! The federal government also had to exempt Alberta from federal environmental regulations to allow this to go through.
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I hate everything about this: the pandering to a billionaire, the continued corruption to support oil and gas and how the regulation gives the director so much latitude.
You can do full or partial provincial EIAs (and small projects are often exempt) but this project should absolutely have an EIA as it’s novel technology and had large cumulative effects. If you’re going to make projects like pulp mills and highways have an EIA this should be a dead ringer
Because some things are more important than the only planet in our solar system that can possibly sustain our species and virtually all life.
And, unsurprisingly, it’s a US-based firm leading the funding for the project with $100 million.
Hey Kev. Who was really driving the boat?
O’Leary is part of this? That asshole should be banned from Canada.
On top of all the other problems data centers bring to communities, one should be aware that datacenters also can behave like ike acoustic weapons.
This video is worth a watch if you are interested in knowing a little more.
I just watched that the other night
Benn has taken an,amazing turn with his channel and I’m all for it.
Build it in Quebec on hydro power and I have zero issue.
Do it like this and I will do everything in my power to stop it.
Im not really worried. Judging by O’Leary’s reputation, both publicly and from the one person I know who’s met him, this is going to involve a whole lot of hype and fundraising, but is highly unlikely to actually get built.
