On Sunday, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Sturgeon County Centre in Morinville, Alberta, to protest Meta’s proposed one-gigawatt artificial intelligence data centre, Global News is reporting.
The demonstration brought out local farmers, university students, and community elders despite rainy weather over the civic holiday weekend. Waving signs with slogans targeting corporate expansion and chanting outside county offices, residents voiced anger over the environmental footprint.
Meta announced last month that it selected Sturgeon County, located just north of Edmonton, for its very first data centre in Canada. The facility carries an estimated price tag of more than $13 billion and is slated to come online within the next two to three years. However, local residents fear the immense power and cooling demands of a one-gigawatt hyperscale facility will directly impact their wallets and environment.
Jessica Tomashiro, a resident of Sturgeon County who attended the rally, raised concerns about how the project could impact local household expenses: “My water, my electricity prices are already high, so how much higher can they go?”
Under current provincial plans, the facility will initially draw surplus electricity from Alberta’s deregulated power grid before eventually transitioning to a dedicated natural gas power plant expected by 2030. Critics argue that burning additional fossil fuels to run server racks undermines broader climate goals, while relying on the existing electrical grid in the interim risks pushing residential rates higher.
Protest organizer Ben Baril, a 20-year-old business student at the University of Alberta, expressed surprise at the turnout and emphasized that opposition to the project runs deep: “For a rainy day, on a long weekend, I wasn’t expecting this many people… but it’s awesome,” Baril said. “We don’t want this data centre here, and we don’t want this data centre anywhere else.”
Beyond utility bills and power grids, demonstrators pointed to broader social anxieties surrounding generative artificial intelligence. For younger attendees, the rapid adoption of automated tools represents a direct threat to the job market.
“AI, for young people especially, represents a threat to our careers as it’s increasingly replacing what were good paying jobs,” Baril noted. Others highlighted the importance of preserving human skills and protecting natural resources from foreign corporate interests.
n response to local anxiety, provincial and municipal leaders maintain that regulatory measures will protect citizens while bringing economic growth to the region. Nate Glubish, Alberta’s Minister of Technology and Innovation, stated that the province designed a regulatory framework specifically to protect Albertans’ interests and address environmental concerns.
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Of course the socialist don’t want anything that makes money. They want us to live on hugging trees, but that doesn’t pay my rent.
Are they also protesting the oil sands project because of environmental concerns? AI is coming whether they want it or not.