When O’Leary (of Dragon’s Den fame) first announced the project a year and a half ago alongside municipal and provincial representatives, they described the project as “the world’s largest AI Data Centre Industrial Park.” The project is slated to need about 7.5 GW of power when fully built.
That’s roughly seven times the amount of electricity generated by the Site C dam in northern BC.
Much of that power is poised to come from natural gas. The company’s initial announcements about the project claimed it would use geothermal power and gas. However, emails _Canada’s National Observer _obtained through a Freedom of Information request from the municipality where the project is located suggest O’Leary’s company rapidly ditched plans for geothermal power in favour of exclusively using natural gas.
If the project is entirely powered by natural gas and doesn’t capture any of those emissions, it will set Canada back 20 years in carbon emissions reductions and wipe out the reductions gained by phasing out coal, according to Will Noel, senior analyst with the Pembina Institute’s electricity team.
Ottawa’s decision to roll back federal climate rules for Alberta’s AI industry comes after intense lobbying efforts by Capital Power, an Alberta electricity company building a gas-powered AI data centre. And Evan Solomon, Canada’s AI minister, has only met with mining and energy companies about the environmental impacts of AI data centres — but so far has ignored environmental groups.
What kind of pOS do you you need to be to vote for someone you don’t agree with? Why would you do that?
Welcome to (especially rural) Alberta. It’s a really tribal thing - there’s a vibe that voting anyone other than Conservative is a betrayal of the community. (Notice Danielle Smith straight-up banned any other parties from calling themselves Conservative, recently)
I was talking to some people from Battle River-Crowfoot back, when PP stole the seat. They were pissed, going on about how much they hate him, and how great the last guy was. Aaand then conversation shifted to how to spell “Poilievre” on the write-in ballot, so it would be counted properly. There was no irony acknowledged, or even a break of any kind to separate the two.
Separating from Canada? Everyone hates it. Messing with people’s pensions as a step towards it? Everyone hates it. Busting strikes? People were pissed, and her polls sure dropped. Buuut it was short lived, and the UCP is leading, despite separatism being about half of their platform.
TBF, you can argue about whether that matters, or if voting blindly for a candidate who’s awful is actually worse than just knowingly being awful. It’s frustrating as hell, for sure.