Meta Plans $9.17bn Alberta Data Centre With 1GW Power Target
A 1GW Meta data-centre plan in Sturgeon County carries CA$13 billion in expected investment, a Project Greenlight power component and no public first-service or grid-approval timetable.
Meta Plans a 1GW Alberta Data Centre
Meta plans to invest CA$13 billion (US$9.17bn) in a 1GW data centre in Sturgeon County, Alberta, with room to expand the campus to 1.8GW.
Data Center Dynamics reported that the project will be Meta’s first data centre in Canada and its 33rd facility globally.
The company announced the plan on July 6 alongside Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and provincial officials.
The facility will use a closed-loop liquid cooling system.
Construction is expected to support 3,000 jobs, followed by 300 operational positions once the site is online.
Power and cooling buildout
Meta vice president of data centres Rachel Peterson said the company chose Sturgeon County for its access to energy and infrastructure, its talent base and its local partners.
“We selected Sturgeon County for its access to energy and infrastructure, strong talent base, and a great set of community partners committed to working with us to move this project forward,” Peterson said in a LinkedIn post.
Meta is “fully funding new generation and grid infrastructure in Alberta,” Peterson said, adding that the company will match the facility’s electricity use with “100 percent clean and renewable energy.” She named Greenlight Limited Partnership, AltaLink, Capital Power and the Alberta Electric System Operator as partners involved in the effort.
The Alberta government said Meta is investing about CA$60 million (US$42.3m) in local infrastructure improvements.
Jobs and Alberta expansion
The power work is linked to Project Greenlight, a CA$4.6 billion (US$3.24bn), 970MW natural gas-fired electricity generation facility involving Pembina Pipeline Corporation, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor.
Smith described the data centre as an artificial-intelligence investment that would create thousands of jobs, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue and improve electricity reliability and affordability.
“Artificial intelligence is transforming the global economy, and Alberta is making sure we lead rather than follow,” Smith said.
“We created the right conditions to attract world-leading investments while protecting the interests of Albertans.”
Meta’s wider capacity push
The Alberta project comes as Meta projects US$120 billion to US$135 billion in capital spending this year.
The company also created its Meta Compute division to expand data-centre capacity; CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it was “planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time.”
Alberta already has other gigawatt-scale proposals.
In January 2026, Synapse Data Center Inc. proposed a separate 1GW development with ten 100MW buildings and about two million square feet (185,805 sqm) of space.
