When O'Leary (of Dragon's Den fame) first announced the project a year and a half ago alongside municipal and provincial representatives, they described the project as "the world's largest AI Data Centre Industrial Park." The project is slated to need about 7.5 GW of power when fully built.
That's roughly seven times the amount of electricity generated by the Site C dam in northern BC.
Much of that power is poised to come from natural gas. The company's initial announcements about the project claimed it would use geothermal power and gas. However, emails _Canada's National Observer _obtained through a Freedom of Information request from the municipality where the project is located suggest O'Leary's company rapidly ditched plans for geothermal power in favour of exclusively using natural gas.
If the project is entirely powered by natural gas and doesn't capture any of those emissions, it will set Canada back 20 years in carbon emissions reductions and wipe out the reductions gained by phasing out coal, according to Will Noel, senior analyst with the Pembina Institute's electricity team.
Ottawa's decision to roll back federal climate rules for Alberta's AI industry comes after intense lobbying efforts by Capital Power, an Alberta electricity company building a gas-powered AI data centre. And Evan Solomon, Canada's AI minister, has only met with mining and energy companies about the environmental impacts of AI data centres
but so far has ignored environmental groups.