CALGARY — Residents of Alberta's Sturgeon County paid little attention to the public notices regarding Meta’s hyper-scale AI data centre hub earlier this year, a county official said.Speaking at the 14th annual Alberta Power Symposium in Calgary on Thursday, Kent McMullin, senior investment attraction officer for economic growth and development in Sturgeon County, said the county designated data centres as a “discretionary use” in 2022 before making them a “permitted use” in 2025 following a public hearing process that attracted little attention from locals at the time.The subsequent announcements of the $4.6-billion Greenlight Electricity Centre and Meta's $13-billion Sturgeon County data centre development prompted significant local opposition, including 126 interveners on Meta's first grading development permit..“We had lots of public notice that this was coming, but nobody paid attention,” McMullin said.“Data centres themselves do not have to have public consultation. We went through that in the rezoning process. Nobody came to the public hearings, no one cared.”McMullin did, however, acknowledge that the announcements surprised local residents and aboriginal communities, adding that engagement efforts were now underway.“We did [our] due diligence to go out there and tell people that this was coming. But we also have to keep companies' confidentiality. So the companies have come, and now it's engagement time,” he said.“We're out there talking and we're trying to engage the community. But to be honest, those that oppose data centres don't care. They've seen what they saw on Facebook, which is ironically run by Meta.”.Alberta approves $4.6B gas-powered project to support AI data centre in Sturgeon County.Matthew O'Regan, manager of energy management for Pembina Pipeline Corporation — which is involved in providing power for Meta's development — said the company recognizes that its projects directly affect surrounding communities.“We operate the Redwater Complex, over 400 employees in the area. Those people are residents. They're curious about what we would be building from the power plant perspective,” O'Regan said.He added that Pembina is responsible only for providing power capacity and is not developing the data centre itself. He said the company aims to be transparent with local residents and aboriginal communities when discussing both the benefits and drawbacks of its projects..MACLEOD: Alberta’s AI awakening — stop exporting LNG and start building ‘super intelligence’ factories.“No development is free from externalities,” he said.“We always try and design our facilities to minimize impact to communities and be transparent about what we're doing. Our projects directly impact our staff and friends and neighbours in the places we operate in. We want to ensure that we're a good developer and a good operator for all groups.”Both men's comments come as the AUC approved a natural gas-fired power plant to serve a data centre in Sturgeon County on Monday.The 920-megawatt power-plant project will be constructed and operated by Heartland Power Generation LP — a subsidiary of Beacon Group Holdings Inc. — which holds a controlling interest in data-centre developer Beacon Data Centers Inc.
