Edmonton area First Nations chiefs call for provincial rethink on data centre policy
Four Edmonton area First Nations chiefs have sent a letter to the Alberta government criticizing the province's electric system operator for its new policy that would for now limit the capacity of large AI data centres, an industry in which they are eager to take part.
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Chiefs of Alexander First Nation (40 km northwest of Edmonton), Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation (85 km northwest of Edmonton), Paul First Nation (65 km west of Edmonton), and Enoch Cree Nation (135 south of Edmonton, one of four bands at Maskwacis), and Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation (85 km northwest of Edmonto), sent a letter on Thursday commending the province for positioning Alberta at the forefront of the industry and emphasizing their desire to be stakeholders and potential investors in new artificial intelligence (AI) data centres. However, they said the Alberta Electric System Operator's (AESO) interim policy to limit power capacity for large data centres is 'inconsistent' with the province's long-term goals.
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Data centres are huge facilities housing the computing firepower needed for artificial intelligence and other applications. It can take an enormous amount of power to run and cool them. The chiefs say the amount of power the AESO has allotted to new projects falls short of what is needed to attract and retain the interest of big tech.
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'While the release of this allocation methodology is a long-awaited milestone that provides some much-needed clarity, the approach appears fundamentally inconsistent with Alberta's stated policy objectives of attracting large hyperscalers and catalyzing a data centre industry at scale,' the letter said.
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'In simple terms, Alberta's current framework is capping our potential at the very moment we should be unleashing it.'
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AESO's interim policy was announced at the beginning of June and would enable connections up to 1,200 megawatts for all large load projects between 2025 and 2028.
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In a statement to Postmedia, AESO said 1,200 MW is the maximum load that can be quickly connected to Alberta's grid without negatively impacting its reliability. Beyond the number, the grid reliability would face 'greater and greater risks.'
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'Those MWs were fairly allocated to developers with the most mature data centre projects based on where they stood in the AESO's connection process,' the statement said.
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'Meeting future demand will require new generation and, potentially, infrastructure investment. As the Independent System Operator, the AESO is working closely with government and industry to evaluate those solutions.'
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AESO said the approach is a response to a surge in data centre requests, with 29 proposed projects representing more than 16 gigawatts (GW) of demand seeking grid connections.
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