Meta is breaking ground on a new 1GW data center in Sturgeon County, Alberta — its first data center in Canada and 33rd in its global fleet. This data center will be optimized for Meta's AI workloads, helping bring to life the technologies that billions around the world use to connect, find communities, grow businesses, and experience the power of Meta's wearables.
Once complete, the Sturgeon County data center will represent an investment of more than CAD $13 billion. Meta anticipates approximately 3,000 construction workers will be onsite at the peak of construction, and the data center will support more than 300 operational jobs.
Meta is also investing approximately CAD $60 million in local infrastructure improvements that will benefit the local community, including roads and water infrastructure, and will launch its annual Data Center Community Action Grants in the region, providing direct funding for local nonprofits that support the community.
Meta pays the full costs of its data centers' energy use so consumers aren’t negatively impacted, and funds new and upgraded infrastructure. Meta worked closely with Greenlight Limited Partnership, Altalink, Capitol Power, and the Alberta Electric System Operator to plan for and meet its energy needs years in advance of this data center coming online.
In Alberta, Meta is fully funding new generation and grid infrastructure to support its data center, which will improve reliability across the entire Alberta grid and will benefit all consumers.
As with all of Meta's data centers, this data center’s electricity use will be matched with 100% clean and renewable energy.
Meta strives to be a good water steward in communities where it has data centers, and Meta aims to be water positive in 2030, meaning it will restore more water than it consumes globally where Meta has owned operations. That’s why Meta minimizes water use in its data centers by design and uses water as efficiently as possible in its operations.
At the Sturgeon data center, Meta plans to use a water efficient closed-loop, liquid-cooled system with dry cooling, which means there will be no operational water use in the cooling system. As a result, water use at the site will be limited to domestic uses, fire protection safety, and equipment maintenance.
Meta also pays the full costs of water and wastewater service required to support its data centers so consumers aren’t negatively impacted, and discloses the water withdrawal and energy use for all its facilities on an annual basis at sustainability.atmeta.com.
Meta is excited to call Sturgeon County home for its newest data center, and looks forward to working with and contributing positively to the local community.
