Almost a year after the Alberta government announced its strategy to attract artificial intelligence data centre investments to the province, one of those early proposed projects has faced a major setback in a county just northeast of Calgary.
Cheers and applause erupted from the audience in the Rocky View County council chamber on Tuesday after councillors voted 6-1 to reject a plan for an AI data centre complex, citing concerns about its proposed location and potential impacts on neighbouring farmers.
The project developer, Kineticor Asset Management, aimed to build a campus in the county’s northeast quadrant amidst farmland, spanning approximately 448 hectares – just over 1.5 times the size of CrossIron Mills.Â
WATCH | Rocky View County council held a public hearing on Kineticor’s data centre proposal:Â 
Alberta county refuses plan to put data centre next to farm land
Rocky View County council voted down a proposal to redevelop farm land northeast of Calgary into a site to home several data centres. The reeve says despite provincial aspirations to attract these data centres to power artificial intelligence, this particular plan just didn’t fit where it was proposed.
The proposed development site would have been situated right next to farmer Wayne Shuttleworth’s land. In July, he received the project proposal and supporting studies, including an environmental assessment and water drainage plan for the first phase of the project.
Among a list of concerns, Shuttleworth said he was worried about stormwater drainage from the complex harming his crops and a lack of clarity from the developer on how that issue would be mitigated.
“As I read through the technical documents, it is very nicely polished and they say all the nice right words … But if you look into their studies, there’s just too much work that’s missing,” he told CBC News the day of the public hearing.Â
Farmer Wayne Shuttleworth presents his case against the Kineticor data centre complex plan to Rocky View County council. The proposed location would have bordered his land. (Helen Pike/CBC)
“They defer things to what needs to be studied at a later date or this can be done at development application time. No, it should be done now. We need to know … [what] the impact is going to be right now.”
The project development was proposed in five phases, with a full build-out to occur over the next 15-20 years. Once complete, the project was planned to accommodate about six data centres, an on-site reservoir and supporting power generation facility.
For the first phase, the project’s team said it had already been allocated electricity by the Alberta Electric Systems Operator, which has a temporary cap on how many new data centres can be added to the electrical grid.
Land and water costs of AI data centres a top concern
Over the 10-hour-long public hearing, council heard from Kineticor’s team, eStruxture, the Montreal-based data centre operator involved with the project, and farmers and landowners in Rocky View County on both sides of the issue. More than 50 presenters stated their opposition to the technology park proposal, while four spoke in favour.
Among the major concerns presented to the council, opposing county landowners said the new development would mean losing prime farmland with high classification, farmable soils.Â
“Why can’t this be put in a more appropriate place? They [Rocky View County] already have identified areas for industrial growth. … Put it there,” said Shuttleworth, referring to an existing technology park in East Balzac.
As indicated in red in a map from the Kineticor Data Centre Campus area structure plan, the proposed technology park would have been located northeast of Calgary. (B&A Studios)
Another common concern was the technology park’s potential water consumption. The proposed plan aimed to draw potable water from the county’s water treatment plant.
What concerned Shuttleworth is how a drought year would impact farmers’ access to water with a data centre next door. As recently as 2023, Shuttleworth said many farmers in the county had to restrict their irrigation systems during a water shortage.
A recent US-based study from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute found that large data centres can consume up to 19Â million litres per day. That’s equivalent to the water use of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people. Much of that water consumption comes from cooling systems meant to keep racks of servers from overheating.Â
LISTEN | Local farmer Earl Munro on council rejecting the Kineticor complex proposal:
Calgary EyeopenerRocky View County votes against data centre
Rocky View County has voted down a controversial proposal for a new data centre east of Balzac. We hear from a rancher who showed up to speak out against it.
Making the case for the complex at Tuesday’s public hearing, eStruxture vice-president and head of corporate development and capital markets Taylor Hammond said eStruxture uses closed-loop cooling that’s more sustainable.
“You’ll wonder why some data centres in the U.S. are using a whole bunch of water and are loud. It’s because it’s expensive to invest in infrastructure that doesn’t consume water and that’s quiet. And that’s something that has been built into our business model from the beginning,” Hammond told council.
Taylor Hammond, representing eStruxture, a data centre operator based in Montreal, made the case for Kineticor’s development plan to Rocky View County on Tuesday. (Helen Pike/CBC)
EStruxture already operates two data centre sites in the Calgary region: CAL-1 and CAL-2. The company recently broke ground on CAL-3 elsewhere in Rocky View County, which is scheduled for launch in the fall.
“We expect that this site will support our development needs to bring Rocky View and Alberta into the digital future,” Hammond said, before the plan was rejected.
Kineticor did not respond to comments after council voted down its proposal.
For landowner Keith Jones, whose property would have also bordered the development site, that “digital future” and its potential economic benefits were appealing, making him one of only a handful of people who spoke in favour of the project at the hearing.
Keith Jones, a landowner with property next to the now-rejected development site, was in favour of the Kineticor proposal, touting its potential economic benefits. (Helen Pike/CBC)
“We’re in a race to compete around the world. We have tech startups in the local area that need to be a part of this,” Jones said.
“[AI data centres are] an important growth area for our economy. It’s important for our societies. And we can’t wait. We can’t dither. If we want to take advantage of these opportunities, it needs to happen now.”
AI data centre race will play out in rural Alberta, expert says
The project approval process was expedited by Rocky View County council after it passed a motion in the spring, following the province’s push to see $100 billion worth of AI data centres get under construction over the next five years. Many residents opposed how quickly the project was being moved forward.
Sabrina Perić, an associate professor in the department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary and co-director of the Energy Stories Lab, said the provincial push to attract and build data centre infrastructure “is going to be a big issue moving forward for rural municipalities.”
“A lot of data centres require quite large footprints, and so I imagine our smaller rural municipalities will be the most impacted by data centres as opposed to urban centres where they’re just really isn’t the space,” she said.
To avoid repeating what happened in Rocky View County, Perić said the province will need to engage more with the public and experts, addressing those critical questions around the land, water and energy costs of data centres.
Rocky View County Reeve Crystal Kissel voted against the data centre plan on Tuesday, but says there’s place for it elsewhere in the county under the right conditions. (Helen Pike/CBC)
Those same concerns led Rocky View County Reeve Crystal Kissel to vote against the plan proposal on Tuesday.Â
“AI is a little bit yet unknown, so we have to be careful just like every other municipality faced with this in Alberta right now. We’re all trying to be careful, making good decisions, and it’s hard to make decisions on things that are really new that we totally don’t have our head around at this point,” she told CBC News.
“So, yes, there’s a place for it, and I’m hoping Kineticor will come back with a new idea and new plan.”
LISTEN |Â Reeve Crystal Kissel on voting against the technology park in Rocky View County:
Calgary EyeopenerRocky View County votes against data centre
We connect with the Reeve of Rocky View County on why she voted to reject the proposal for a data centre east of Balzac.