Human rights group Amnesty International calls out Meta data centre project in Sturgeon County

Amnesty International says new data centre build in Sturgeon County comes with concerns, both short and long-term

An unexpected opponent has emerged against the new AI data centre project that is planned to be built north of Edmonton. Amnesty International Canada is opposing the project by Meta, which is anticipated to take up an area larger than Vancouver's Stanley Park in Sturgeon County. "This is a highly unregulated industry that operates on a surveillance-based business model," Tara Scurr, Amnesty International Canada's Corporate Accountability and Climate Justice Campaigner.

The $13-billion project is slated to be Meta's first North American project outside the United States and will be powered by a recently announced power plant that will operate at 970 megawatts. Among the concerns Scurr had with the project is just how much power it will use. The data centre is projected to use one gigawatt of power.

Data from Epcor says the city of Edmonton alone uses 1.5 gigawatts of power on a peak day. Calgary uses slightly less, with the utility company Enmax reporting it provided Calgary an average of 1.107 gigawatts of power through its distribution system. It's that fact that has Scurr wondering just how much of an environmental impact this project, and other energy projects like it, will have.

"It is not bringing us to where we need to be to honour our climate commitment and also to make Canada a more climate-resilient country based on renewables," said Scurr. "We have a lot of work to do to build the renewable infrastructure we need across the country." This isn't the first energy project Amnesty International has been vocal about in Alberta.

The human rights organization condemned the oil pipeline Alberta and the federal government agreed to in a memorandum of understanding, calling it "the wrong choice at the wrong time." As for this project, the Alberta government says the data centre will include a closed-loop design, with all water use being limited and subject to approval under the terms of the provincial Water Act. Meta has echoed this, saying it will also take on all the costs with water and wastewater service.

The social media giant headquartered in Silicon Valley, located in the San Francisco Bay area, is also committing to publicly disclose all its energy use online. However, for Scurr, that doesn't do much to assuage all her concerns around this project, and others like it. “How will they measure the upstream watershed impacts?

Are they investing in watershed integrity? Those are, I think, some of the concerns that we would have. Like, we are trading one problem for another by not looking at this by not requiring them to be powered by renewable energy?" said Scurr.

"There's just so many questions still to be answered."