Pembina Pipeline Corp., alongside Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor Asset Management, has approved the construction of the Greenlight Electricity Centre, a natural gas facility designated to cater to a data center client. The project is estimated to cost $4.6 billion and is set to establish a 932-megawatt plant in Sturgeon County within Alberta’s Industrial Heartland area, located to the north of Edmonton. The anticipated commencement of operations is slated for the latter half of the year 2030, with potential future capacity expansion as the companies currently possess permits for doubling the plant’s output.
Data centers house essential computer hardware necessary for running various technological applications, and their significance has grown substantially with the expansion of artificial intelligence and cloud computing sectors. While the identity of the specific data center client has not been disclosed by the province or the involved companies, Alberta has been actively seeking to attract major hyperscale developers like Meta and Google to establish a presence in the region. However, due to the existing limitations of Alberta’s electricity grid, the province is prioritizing projects that incorporate or secure their own power generation capabilities.
Premier Danielle Smith highlighted the Greenlight Electricity Centre as a prime illustration of this strategy, emphasizing the approach of data centers providing their power generation and covering related infrastructure costs. This framework aims to reduce transmission expenses on Alberta’s utility bills in the long run. The Premier credited a comprehensive energy agreement signed between Ottawa and Alberta in November for enabling such investments, including the suspension of federal clean electricity regulations to support energy projects and attract substantial investments to bolster and diversify the economy significantly.
Scott Burrows, Pembina’s CEO, commended Alberta’s efforts in fostering a conducive environment for projects like Greenlight to progress, noting the province’s focus on competitiveness, investment attraction, and energy sector development. Burrows expressed pride in pioneering initiatives to address Alberta’s large-scale data center energy requirements and contribute to establishing the essential infrastructure to support the rapidly expanding industry.
Despite concerns raised in some Canadian and U.S. communities regarding pollution and noise associated with data center developments, particularly those involving gas plant components, Premier Smith assured that the Greenlight project is situated in an industrial development-accepted area with residences located kilometers away from the planned natural gas plant site.
The Pembina Institute, an independent clean energy research organization unrelated to the energy sector, criticized the Greenlight Energy Centre project for missing an opportunity to leverage more cost-effective renewable energy sources as the expenses of gas-fired power escalate. The Institute highlighted the limitations of Alberta’s current ‘bring your own generation’ rules for data centers, emphasizing the need for a diversified energy mix to mitigate environmental impacts and cost burdens associated with gas-fired power generation.
