Meta's Alberta Bet Signals a Multi-Gigawatt Market, Capital Power Says
The utility supplying interim power to Meta's C$13 billion data center says multiple hyperscalers have been evaluating Alberta for the past 18 months, but new analysis warns that grid reliance before dedicated generation comes online could raise household electricity bills by hundreds of dollars a year.
CALGARY: Meta's decision to build a C$13 billion data center in Sturgeon County has transformed Alberta's standing among hyperscale operators, according to the utility that will supply interim power to the site. Capital Power CEO Avik Dey said the province has the potential to become a multi-gigawatt market, and his company is in active talks with several proponents about electricity supply for potential projects (Reuters, 2026).
"I do feel strongly that we've got the potential to be a multi-gigawatt market," Dey said in an interview, adding that multiple hyperscalers have been evaluating Alberta for roughly the last 18 months. Capital Power is pitching its Genesee Generating Station southwest of Edmonton as a potential site for large data centers, citing access to land, water, and transmission infrastructure (Reuters, 2026). The company announced a long-term energy supply agreement for 250 megawatts of capacity to support Meta's Sturgeon County data center, providing power until a dedicated natural gas-fired plant being built with Pembina Pipeline comes online in 2030.
The scale of interest extends well beyond Meta. Canada has only a handful of hyperscale data centers operating, but companies have proposed more than 100 in Alberta, drawn by abundant and cheap natural gas, available land, and a cold climate that reduces cooling costs. Last week, Canadian telecom firm BCE announced plans to quadruple the size of its planned data center in Saskatchewan to a 1.2-gigawatt hub, with the provincial government prioritizing Canadian ownership in its assessments. Alberta has pursued Silicon Valley hyperscalers aggressively, allowing new proponents to build their own electricity sources to maximize power capacity.
That approach has drawn scrutiny. A report released last month by the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think tank, found that allowing data centers to draw from the provincial grid before their own generating capacity is running will strain supply and could raise electricity costs for consumers (Pembina Institute, 2026). The analysis projected that Meta's data center could add between $270 and $460 to annual household power bills in Alberta during its early years, when it will draw entirely on the grid and consume almost as much power as the city of Calgary (National Observer, 2026). Meta has disputed the findings. Public opinion is also a factor: an Angus Reid poll from July found that 68 percent of Canadians would oppose a large data center built near their home, with rural opposition slightly higher at 73 percent (Angus Reid Institute, 2026).
BuiltWorld AI Operational Take: The race to attract hyperscale investment in Alberta hinges on a sequencing problem that few jurisdictions have solved. Data centers need power immediately, but dedicated generation takes years to permit and build. The interim grid draw that Capital Power is facilitating for Meta keeps the project on track, yet it also creates the consumer cost exposure that the Pembina Institute has flagged. Project teams evaluating Alberta should be modeling the full cost of interim grid reliance, including the political risk that comes with rising household bills. The province's "bring your own generation" model works only if developers can finance and deliver power assets on a timeline that matches data hall construction, and right now those two clocks are not synchronized.