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The City of Ottawa will draw up a new data centre policy as councillors ask staff for a heads-up on massive “hyperscale” projects to give them the chance to temporarily block them.
The idea came from Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stéphanie Plante, who noted in a motion to city council Wednesday that Ottawa currently doesn’t have any policies on data centres in its top planning document, though zoning rules do allow them in some industrial areas.
Plante’s motion passed unanimously. She said she wanted to find a balance between those who want to ban data centres altogether, and companies that want cities to roll out the red carpet for them.
“I think this motion lands in a reasonable space between two extremes,” she said. “This motion isn’t anti-data centre.”
Critics have said that such facilities use huge amounts of water and power, but Plante says they can also bring community benefits, including tax revenue.
Her motion asks city staff to draw up a framework for how to assess data centres based on their size and potential impact, including environment standards. The result would come back to city council next year for approval.
In the meantime, she also asked city staff to alert council about any applications for “hyperscale data centres,” to give councillors the chance to pass an interim control bylaw.
Marcia Wallace, the city’s general manager of planning, development and building services, said such a bylaw would allow the city to shut an application down on the grounds that a framework is still pending.
General manager of strategic initiatives Debbie Stewart defined hyperscale data centres as massive facilities that use at least 50 megawatts of power, generally serving AI uses.
Hydro Ottawa has said that it’s facing “extraordinary pressure” from dozens of applications from large-load customers, with the bulk of that demand coming from data centres.
Wallace said the new framework will look at whether requirements and conditions should be built into the planning process for data centres, and whether those of different sizes should face different rules.
Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Tim Tierney said he’s glad the motion passed Wednesday doesn’t call for a moratorium, and noted that the federal and provincial governments are already working on rules and policies for data centres.
“A lot of misinformation lies out there, so we want to make sure that that’s resolved…” he said. “We also have to protect municipalities and that’s a role of the federal government. They’ve definitely gotten involved in this and I support the efforts that they’re doing.”
Hamilton city council rejected such a moratorium this year.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said Ottawa’s approach strikes the right balance, especially in light of the need for data sovereignty.
“We don’t want our data stored in the United States or other countries that might be hostile towards Canada in the future, so there’s a need for these facilities,” he said.
“At the same time, we need to protect our local communities from large-scale developments that may impact on neighborhoods, may impact on the environment.”