Breaking Ground on Meta’s First Data Center in Canada
July 13, 2026
Sturgeon County, Alberta Announced as Home of Meta’s First 1GW Data Center in Canada
- Meta is breaking ground on a new 1GW, AI optimized data center in Alberta, Canada that will help power their AI innovations and core products.
- The project represents an investment of more than CAD $13 billion and will support over 3,000 construction workers at peak and more than 300 operational jobs.
- As part of this project, they will invest approximately CAD $60 million in local infrastructure improvements that will benefit the local community and provide grants and funding to local nonprofits.
Meta is breaking ground on a new 1GW Data Center in Sturgeon County, Alberta — their first data center in Canada and 33rd in their global fleet. This data center will be optimized for Meta’s AI workloads, helping bring to life the technologies that billions around the world use to connect, fund communities, grow businesses, and experience the power of their wearables.
Investing in Sturgeon County
Once complete, their Sturgeon County data center will represent an investment of more than CAD $13 billion. They anticipate approximately 3,000 construction workers will be onsite at the peak of construction, and the data center will support more than 300 operational jobs.
Meta is also investing approximately CAD $60 million in local infrastructure improvements that will benefit the local community, including roads and water infrastructure, and will launch their annual Data Center Community Action Grants in the region, providing direct funding for local nonprofits that support the community.
Supporting the Electrical Grid
Meta pays the full costs of their data centers’ energy use, so consumers aren’t negatively impacted, and fund new and upgraded infrastructure. They worked closely with Greenlight Limited Partnership, Altalink, Capitol Power, and the Alberta Electric System Operator to plan for and meet their energy needs years in advance of this data center coming online.
In Alberta, they are fully funding new generation and grid infrastructure to support their data center, which will improve reliability across the entire Alberta grid and will benefit all consumers. As with all of their data centers, this data center’s electricity use will be matched with 100% clean and renewable energy.
Prioritizing Water Stewardship
Meta strives to be good water stewards in communities where they have data centers, and they aim to be water positive in 2030, meaning they will restore more water than they consume globally where Meta has owned operations. That’s why they minimize water use in their data centers by design and use water as efficiently as possible in their operations.
At their Sturgeon data center, they plan to use a water efficient closed-loop, liquid cooled system with dry cooling, which means there will be no operational water use in the cooling system. As a result, water use at the site will be limited to domestic uses, fire protection safety, and equipment maintenance. Meta will also pay the full costs of water and wastewater service required to support their data centers, so consumers aren’t negatively impacted, and disclose the water withdrawal and energy use for all their facilities on an annual basis at sustainability.atmeta.com.
Meta is excited to call Sturgeon County home for their newest data center, and look forward to working with and contributing positively to the local community.
For more information on Meta HERE
Sturgeon County
