Skip to Content News Archives Economy Energy Oil & Gas Renewables Electric Vehicles Mining Commodities Agriculture Real Estate Mortgages Mortgage Rates Finance Banking Insurance Fintech Cryptocurrency Work Wealth Smart Money Wealth Management Investor Personal Finance Family Finance Retirement Taxes High Net Worth FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials More Innovation Information Technology FP500 Podcasts Small Business Lives Told Tails Told Shopping Financial Post Store Obituaries Place a Notice Advertising Advertising With Us Advertising Solutions Postmedia Ad Manager Sponsorship Requests Classifieds Place a Classifieds ad Working Profile Settings My Subscriptions Saved Articles My Offers Newsletters Customer Service FAQ News Economy Energy Mining Real Estate Finance Work Wealth Investor FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials HomeEnergyAlberta is all in on AI data centres, but a new poll suggests the public isn'tMore than 40% want a temporary pause on new approvals until their impact on electricity prices, grid reliability, water use and emissions can be reviewedLast updated 1 hour ago You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.A digital rendering of a proposed data centre in Alberta. SuppliedAlbertans don’t appear to be sold on data centres, and they aren’t overwhelmingly skeptical either, a new Leger survey suggests.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorForty-two per cent of those polled said they want a temporary pause on new approvals for large AI data centres until an independent public review examines the effects on electricity prices, grid reliability, water use and emissions.Another 40 per cent said Alberta should keep considering and approving them under current rules, so the province does not lose investment and jobs to other jurisdictions. Leger describes opinion as nearly evenly divided.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againData centres use enormous amounts of electricity, and Leger asked who should pay for it. Almost nobody polled wants them treated like an ordinary customer. Just 12 per cent of respondents said a data centre should be able to hook into Alberta’s power grid and pay the same rates as any other big industrial user.Half went further. The single-largest group, 29 per cent, said data centres should build or buy their own power and cover the full cost of connecting to the grid, close to what the province already requires. Another 22 per cent said Alberta should not approve of them at all. In between, a similar share would allow grid access only if operators paid the full cost of the power and the lines to carry it.Andrew Enns, an executive vice-president at Leger, said respondents have very little to go on.“We don’t actually have that many of them in full operation in Canada yet,” Enns said. “We need a few of these things to start operating and actually get a sense of what the operation is like, in terms of the demand for electricity, the implications for ratepayers, the demands on the environment.”“You see very mushy opinions,” he said.Enns is right about the shortage of working examples. Canada has five hyperscale data centres in operation, two in British Columbia and one each in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, with 96 more announced or under construction. Hyperscale means anything drawing 50 megawatts or more. Meta Platforms Inc.’s planned facility northeast of Edmonton would draw 20 times that.Alberta accounts for roughly 90 per cent of the proposed capacity. Those figures come from a working paper published earlier this month by Alexander Carlo and Lyndsey Rolheiser, researchers at York University’s Schulich School of Business.The same paper counts 194 active data centres across Canada, drawing 1.6 gigawatts between them. Meta’s would draw one gigawatt by itself.Rolheiser said the figures are current as of the beginning of June and that Meta’s project alone would equal about two-thirds of Canada’s current total capacity.“I can’t speak directly to what Albertans should take from it, other than this scale is incredibly large and the potential for negative local externalities is also large,” Rolheiser said.“A transparent conversation about the actual positive local externalities needs to take place, as well as what guardrails the province and county are willing to put up to prevent the local costs from outweighing the benefits.”On Meta’s project specifically, 44 per cent of those polled said they support it; 36 per cent said they oppose it, and 20 per cent had no view.Respondents were then told what the project involves. It is expected to bring more than $13 billion in investment, over 3,000 construction workers at a peak and more than 300 permanent jobs once running. It would be a one-gigawatt facility powered by a new natural-gas plant, and Meta says it will pay for the energy and grid infrastructure it needs.On those terms, 57 per cent called it a good deal for Alberta, against 27 per cent who called it a bad one.Ask what worries them and the answer is the power bill. Electricity demand and power prices led the concern list, ahead of water use.“There’s been a few data centres in the United States where, once they were up and running, suddenly there was a bit of an implication for local ratepayers in terms of their rates going up,” Enns said.Investment in Alberta topped the benefits list at 19 per cent. The next most common answer, at 17 per cent, was that the projects deliver no real benefit at all. Long-term jobs finished at 10 per cent.“These data centres aren’t big, heavy employee-driven operations,” Enns said. “That long-term employment, that’s not a really big selling feature.”Divide Meta’s $13 billion by the 300 permanent jobs, and each one costs about $43 million.Men and women split further apart. Among men polled, 59 per cent backed the Sturgeon County project. Among women, 30 per cent did.Enns attributed the gap to two things. Women track environmental impacts more closely, he said, and they tend to run the household ledger.“In a lot of households, women are responsible for the micro budget choices,” he said. “Squaring the utility bills at the end of the month, the cash flow in versus the cash flow out. We see it on the affordability side, that women are much more attuned to anything that might make things for the household more expensive.”Rocky View County has already had this argument. Council rejected Kineticor Asset Management’s 1,100-acre campus near Balzac in a vote of six to one last September, citing the location and the impact on neighbouring farmers.Asked about a comparable facility within 25 kilometres of their own home, respondents flipped to 41 per cent support and 44 per cent opposition.The explanation falls to the government.“The big numbers that get thrown around, $13 billion, or millions of dollars in tax revenues, they don’t stand on their own as being just a good thing,” Enns said. “Governments and local municipalities shouldn’t take for granted that the public is aware. I would argue they’re not.”Leger surveyed 1,000 Alberta adults online between July 17 and 19, 2026. Online panels cannot be assigned a margin of error, but a probability sample of this size would carry one of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Results were weighted by age, gender and region. 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