AI data centres are getting bigger — but where do you put them?

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: In the US, tech titans have been building out giant data centers to train and run AI. And there's been growing resistance over impacts on local communities. [00:00:15] Speaker 2: Our goal is AI for all. [00:00:17] Speaker 1: As Canada looks to develop an AI economy and AI sovereignty, a Made in Canada pushback is starting. [00:00:24] Speaker 2: There's not really a good spot for a data center. No matter where we put data centers, especially the AI ones, the environmental impacts are going to be significant. [00:00:34] Speaker 1: We didn't used to think much about data centers. Anonymous buildings, often in urban or suburban areas, close to where the users are. They house IT infrastructure and we rely on them every day for the cloud services we enjoy. But the scale and location of data centers is changing in Canada to meet demands of AI and large-scale cloud computing. [00:00:57] Speaker 3: It is Alberta's first truly hyperscale, large-scale data center at 90 megawatts. We're launching the first phase, which is going to go live here in Q3 of this year. [00:01:08] Speaker 1: So that means the kind of buildings and their needs are changing. [00:01:12] Speaker 4: In some cases, we're seeing hundreds of acres of land required for a single data center. [00:01:18] Speaker 1: Location is changing too. Lindsay Rollheiser is the co-author of a new paper, currently under peer review, into the status of planned data centers. We're seeing a massive shift where the vast majority of proposed centers would be in Alberta. [00:01:32] Speaker 4: We're seeing more and more proposed data centers going in places with really cheap land and access to energy. So previously, we see a lot of infrastructure in Ontario. But going into the future, we're going to see that build out more so happen in Alberta. So about 90% of that build out will be in Alberta. [00:01:53] Speaker 1: Now, these large data centers aren't all alike. They might be processing users' AI needs. They might be even bigger and more powerful for training AI. Or they're for cloud computing more generally. But these so-called hyperscale centers are multiplying. Canada currently has five hyperscale data centers with power capacities between 50 to 100 megawatts. Two in BC and the others in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. But there are 96 more announced or under construction. Most with even higher capacity. So what was once a mostly unnoticed urban or suburban thing is rapidly becoming a big development project. Especially in Alberta. Olds Alberta is a community of around 10,000 people between Red Deer and Calgary. The proposed Olds data center complex would end up being 10 times the size of any other data center currently in Canada. [00:02:46] Speaker 5: I know we don't want to be the test case. [00:02:48] Speaker 1: The community met for an information session last month. [00:02:51] Speaker 6: What you're facing with this is massive fallout from emissions, sound, construction. [00:02:58] Speaker 7: There are a number of people I know who are preparing or have listed their homes. There are businesses who I know are looking to relocate out of town. [00:03:07] Speaker 1: And many residents feel the lack of information acutely. [00:03:11] Speaker 8: There was very vague conversations on town council meetings. There was no heads up. There was no consultation. [00:03:19] Speaker 1: And the concerns are not just in Olds Alberta. New data suggests 68% of Canadians surveyed would oppose a large data center near their home. With rural residents even more strongly opposed. In the US, protests focus on AI data centers as noisy and as energy and water hogs. Water cooling has sparked concerns especially in the western states where there are limited amounts of water. Lake Tahoe's utility company has to find a new source of power because the electricity supplier plans to divert city power to data centers. Data centers use a lot of electricity. And it's important to match with grid capacity. Alberta encourages developers to bring their own power. But there's debate about how much water is actually used and the impact of electricity use on communities and the environment. Companies behind these hyperscale developments in Canada say that technology has changed. [00:04:16] Speaker 5: The amount of energy that these data centers used to use is nowhere near what they use today. And the amount of water that they used to use is nowhere near what they use today. We will pay our share for energy and we will ensure that electricity rates do not go up for Canadians. [00:04:32] Speaker 1: Quebec company eStructure is building a 90 megawatt hyperscale data center due to open later this year in the Calgary area. [00:04:39] Speaker 3: With these new AI workloads, they're super high power density. They require a significant amount of cooling. But we're using all closed loop systems and it continues to recirculate itself. So we don't turn to the city for water. And potentially there's some old school designs out there in different parts of the world where they do have more access to water. Where the city has made it more inviting for them to take that water. And those kind of one-off headlines kind of get painted pretty broadly. [00:05:06] Speaker 1: In all the back and forth between opponents and proponents, there's been a frustrating lack of really clear concrete information. Now, partly that's because there are different kinds of data centers, different designs, and different power sources based on local conditions. And partly because there's a lack of real studies on exactly what all the impacts are. [00:05:26] Speaker 4: Are the economic benefits really being achieved? The way that governments tell the communities this is going to be beneficial for these reasons, X, Y, Z, do we actually see those outcomes? We don't know for sure. There's a couple papers, working papers, nothing's been published yet on these questions. [00:05:46] Speaker 1: Transparency and access to clear, reliable data is key to our ability to have reasoned debate about the future of data centers. [00:05:56] Speaker 3: We've got to continue to work together, both industry and government, to continue to build public trust. And I think fundamentally, whether it's misinformation or even the right information, the questions just haven't been answered. It's on all of us to get out there and take their questions, address them openly, make sure we're working towards solutions. towards solutions.