Origionally published Feb. 23, 2025 at The Narwhal. Read the full story here.

Just past the sign that welcomes drivers to Olds, Alta., sits a parcel of farmland. It’s on the edge of town, across the street from homes and tucked behind the old municipal building, which was sold to the local Co-op two years ago. 

It’s where a developer is proposing to build a $10-billion data centre, along with the second-largest power plant in Alberta, to satisfy the world’s seemingly voracious appetite for data. 

The natural gas facility, proposed by Synapse Data Centre Inc., will produce 1.4 gigawatts of energy each day, solely to power what could become the largest artificial intelligence (AI) data centre in the country. 

That’s equivalent to the daily demand for the entire city of Edmonton.

For some, including a town council wrestling with debt and eager to find new income, it’s a boon. For others, including residents caught off guard by a fast-moving developer, it raises concerns over air and water pollution, noise and more.  

That sort of investment in a town of just under 10,000 is significant.

The developer approached the town last November, and went public near the end of January regarding its plans. Synapse has said it wants to start construction in March — something Mayor Dan Daley calls “pretty optimistic.”

The data centre, if built, would be the biggest project amidst a potential building boom in Alberta, pushed by a provincial data centre strategy launched in 2024 that seeks to attract $100 billion worth of investment to the province. 

It’s also a significant test of the government’s “bring your own energy” part of that strategy, which prioritizes data centre projects that include on-site power generation, separate from the provincial electricity grid.

But closer to home, the project has raised more immediate concerns for residents of Olds.

Janae Johnson, who lives near the proposed facility, worries about how close the data centre will be to homes, but also the wetlands and fields of Olds College, just across the street. She worries about air pollution, water, noise and a project that seems to be moving fast with little public information. 

“We’re talking about the biggest plant, that’s using new technology that hasn’t been proven, that is not typically located right in a residential area,” she says.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE NARWHAL.