Alberta accounts for 90% of Canada’s planned data centre capacity, CBC News reported, partly due to the province’s relatively low electricity costs. Meta has announced plans to build its first Canadian facility near Edmonton, a project signalling continued demand for skilled trades and construction labour.
Hamilton, Ont., came close to approving its own moratorium this week before city council voted the measure down. Anne Pasek, a Trent University associate professor who studies data centres, told CBC News that “this … seems to be our hot data centre summer,” adding that many projects are approved “without adequate public consultation.”
Canadian employers in construction, skilled trades and technology may face volatile, concentrated hiring demand ahead, as a federal document shows proposed data centre projects nationwide could total more than 20 gigawatts, according to previous data shared by The Canadian Press (CP).
Energy, water and community pushback
Data centres accounted for about 1.5% of global energy consumption in 2024, according to International Energy Agency estimates cited by CBC News, with that figure expected to more than double by 2030. Facilities are cooled largely through evaporative methods requiring freshwater.
Shaolei Ren, a University of California, Riverside professor who researches energy-efficient computing, told CBC News that water demand from data centres is “really localized,” even though total consumption remains lower than some other industries. He added that “the key challenge for energy is really the peak power usage in the summer.”