Alberta’s premier claims it’ll probably reduce electricity costs; don’t count on that, though, says the Pembina Institute
But what about that other Alberta Government announcement on Thursday?
Thursday afternoon at 3:30, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Utilities Minister RJ Sigurdson climbed up on a stage in Calgary with a couple of corporate bosses to announce something called “the Greenlight Electricity Centre” in Sturgeon County.
Say what? Ah, it’s just a wee 932-megawatt natural-gas-powered electricity plant up there just northeast of Edmonton in what really is called the region’s “industrial heartland,” the speakers explained.
It’ll be used to power one of those AI data centres, but don’t worry about that, all the residential houses are more than a kilometre away, Ms. Smith breezily told a reporter.
And, eventually, the three corporate partners in this project – Pembina Pipeline Corp., Kineticor Asset Management LP, and Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners Inc. – might expand the power plant to 1,800 megawatts …
At the risk of being a party pooper – or not, depending on how you view these things, dear readers – I will note that according to Google’s now ubiquitous AI research helper, which itself must run on considerable amounts of power from somewhere, 1,000 megawatts “is massive; running continuously, it is generally enough to supply electricity to between 700,000 and 1,000,000 typical homes depending on regional climate and energy use.”
Now, before we go on, we should note that it’s not clear why the news conference was held at all six and a half hours after Ms. Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney had expected to be on stage together announcing their plan to build another diluted bitumen pipeline mostly along the route of the Trans Mountain Pipeline from the town of Bruderheim near Edmonton to the Roberts Bank Superport on the Salish Sea.
As we all know, the PM’s arrival was delayed by hours. Perhaps the Greenlight announcement was supposed to be the second news conference that day. Or maybe someone decided the delay was an opportunity to hold a quick newser on what is in fact a very significant development at a time reporters’ minds were focused on the bigger announcement to come, which had been rescheduled from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. that night.
Like the premier and Mr. Sigurdson, Pembina Pipeline President Scott Burrows and Kineticor CEO Andrew Plaunt were on standby for the prime minister’s arrival that evening anyway.
The government’s 250-word news release showed signs of having been hastily cobbled together. No canned quotes composed for any of these guys. Pembina Pipeline’s release had more detail of the sort written with potential investors in mind. It even had some nice quotes, including one for Premier Smith.
“Investments like this will lead to thousands of jobs, significant economic growth, and hundreds of millions in provincial revenue that can be reinvested to support the services that matter most to Albertans,” she said in Pembina Pipeline’s release.
The cost of the project, it was revealed Thursday, will be a whopping $4.6 billion. This will produce about 30 “long-term skilled positions.” So that’s about $153 million per permanent job, I reckon, which if nothing else may tell us something about how efficient the petroleum industry has become at eliminating human work. Regardless, though, the government news release promised there will be about 1,000 construction jobs, so that’s something.
Water use? Nothing at all was said about water use in either news release or the news conference, although we know that water use like electricity demand is a major concern about AI data centres in other jurisdictions. Just because it’s been raining a lot in Alberta for the past month doesn’t mean it always will be.
The premier did boast that her government’s “Bring Your Own Power” model for AI data centres “is designed to protect the reliability and affordability of electricity that Albertans depend on.”
“By having data centres bring their own generation and pay for related power infrastructure, this framework ensures that projects like this one will actually reduce transmission costs on Alberta’s utility bills,” she insisted. This may be true, but living five minutes or so away from Sturgeon County myself, I’d feel better if I could see that claim crunched by an impartial expert.
Speaking of experts, a statement written by Pembina Institute Electricity Director David Pickup Thursday predicted that higher electricity prices are exactly what is likely to happen because of this and other natural-gas projects. The Pembina Institute, no relation to Pembina Pipeline, is an energy and environmental policy think tank based in Calgary.
“Adding a new power plant of this size – generating enough electricity to power a city two-thirds the size of Calgary – will massively increase demand for gas in the province,” Mr. Pickup wrote in his response to the announcement.
“This, combined with Prime Minister Carney’s announcement today that Canada intends to ‘triple’ LNG exports over the next decade, will expose Albertans to much more intense market competition for the gas they rely on heavily to heat their homes and power their grid,” he continued. “This likely means household electricity costs for Albertans will keep rising in the years ahead.”
Mr. Pickup argued such projects should instead have in part relied on cheaper renewable alternatives, such as wind, solar and battery storage – all of which, unfortunately, are illogically anathema to Ms. Smith and the UCP Government.
“We know from examples around the world that when countries begin to export more gas abroad, they see prices spike for consumers at home,” Mr. Pickup said. “Albertans, will be very exposed.”
He concluded: “Alberta urgently needs to return to a true free electricity market — where renewables are not suppressed, and demand for gas is not artificially enhanced. Until this happens, Albertans will continue to pay the price in their energy bills.”
Experience shows that data centres wherever they crop up tend to be rolled out in the same manner, said Saskatchewan-based researcher Simon Enoch of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives at a recent presentation on data centres.
This often includes an implication by political leaders there is no alternative to AI data centres and financing details for the facilities that are cloaked in corporate confidentiality, sometimes enforced with non-disclosure agreements on local governments, Mr. Enoch said. Often such projects are fast tracked by local and regional governments that frequently cut corners to overcome opposition, he added.
Typical concerns raised by residents wherever AI data centres have been proposed include their impact on local electricity rates, water use, relentless noise at every hour of the day and night, hidden government subsidies, lack of environmental assessments, their impact on taxes, and the impact on the local economy.
The day after Mr. Enoch’s presentation in Regina, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew announced that his province was pulling the plug on a large natural-gas-powered data centre proposed by a pair of companies from the U.S. and British Columbia on 141 hectares of farmland south of Winnipeg.
“We’ve taken a look at this project. We’ve taken a look at AI more broadly,” Mr. Kinew told the CBC on June 4. “These hyperscale data centres don’t appear to be in the best interests of Manitobans. So we’re going to say no to this data centre.”
“I reject the idea that we have to be slaves to surveillance capitalism in order to participate in the modern economy,” he said.
We peasants are just cogs in the oligarchs’ wheels. Speaking of a “toxic and ruined future” where people are forced to live underground for centuries, the TV series Silo has resumed.
“I reject the idea that we have to be slaves to surveillance capitalism in order to participate in the modern economy.”
There are more reasons to love Wab Kinew almost every day it seems. The opposite is true of our own premier.
We know Premier Wab is no Mar-a-Lago marionette and answers to his own drummer. We need more public servants like him who understand public service.
Noise, water use, and pollution of that water, and even higher power prices, on top of Albertans already paying the highest power prices in Canada, thanks to Ralph Klein’s deregulation of electricity, and the UCP ripping us off further, by allowing economic withholding to commence, several years ago. What could possibly go wrong with this AI data centre? Now, to add to this absurdity, Corb Lund’s Water Not Coal Petition was deemed invalid by Elections Alberta, due to a certain amount of invalid signatures. That claim doesn’t seem to stand up to scrutiny. Also, Rebecca Schulz has now landed a prestigious position with a petrochemical company. No cooling off period, after she resigned from the UCP. Something is absolutely rotten in Alberta under the UCP. Whose pockets are being filled with money? In a sensible world, misfits like these would be behind bars.
And then there’s the AI data centre that’s being built, somewhat under the radar (no signs on the one building or site, so far), on U of A’s South Campus. How will it be powered? How will the water be provided? How will the increased air pollution affect people? And how will it affect quality of life and health for those of us living within 1.5 to 3 kilometres from it? (Jury’s still out on distances) Not looking forward to the constant noise, and losing the enjoyment of my back yard and garden, among other things.
Katherine Weaver: These AI data centres are pure evil. Even in the USA, many people oppose them, in any state they are being proposed. Kevin O’Leary isn’t appreciated for what he is doing. In the Fort Saskatchewan area, the ground is already contaminated from the industrial activity.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters
Regrettably, this is one more thing that we will need to vociferously protest. I think I read that there are,maybe, four A I data centres planned for the Calgary area. I saw something about people from Indus which, I think the article said, is 6 kilometers from Calgary.
It feels as if there are so many plans by the Alberta government to do things which are contrary to the best interests of Albertans that it is almost impossible to keep up.And trying to write letters on and protest what is planned seems like a task that we can’t keep up with.
It seems clear to me that the Alberta government has planned things that way, and this makes it very unlikely that most people have the time to keep up with all these negative plans and even less likely that they will have the time an energy to protest them both by letter and, possibly, with actual public protests.
I find it a very discouraging prospect that the government of Alberta has made it almost impossible for residents to effectively protest the mounting number of bad plans. These, include separation, a police force that is being created by , privatization of health care, and approving A I data centres with no public input and a cursory environmental impact assessment that assesses almost nothing. And the premier downplaying the extreme impacts of A I data centres on electricity, water, noise, heat, and land use of a large area for each centre. This seems to reinforce the fantastical idea that Alberta will make millions with almost no effort.
Remember, you’ll never need to use a credit card to pay for health services in Alberta. That’s why the My Health Alberta webpage was turned into a convenient payment portal for government services, under the guise of an energy rebate. It won’t be limited to privatized health services, though. Soon all government services will be user pay, IMO.
The 80 percent of Albertans who don’t support separatism won’t bother to show up at the polls on October 19. No, they’ll let people with axes to grind against Troo-doh! do the voting for them, then act surprised. Right now they have bigger priorities, like lining up like cattle and scoring free half-cooked pancakes. Who cares if the world is on fire?
Data centres are the biggest idiocracy idea of the century. Why not just stick signs over them stating, “We’re Here To Wipe Out The Human Race” like they’re Cylon factories.
The world’s on fire. Let’s turn up the heat and suck up all the water. YAY!
There’s an energy crisis. Let’s suck up enough energy per unit to keep half a million people, alive. YAY!
There’s an economic crisis. Let’s add to the economic burdens of taxpayers and download the costs of energy and water onto the neighbours. YAY!
There’s droughts and famines. Let’s suck up the available arable farmland and destroy the water table. YAY!
For what? A surveillance network and over-engineered sales pitches and attention munchers? Because China might have more? My neighbour caught scabies. Doesn’t mean I need them.
Get me outta this timeline. Pronto.
One thing I know for certain, Smith and O’Dreary did not go to Mar-a-Lago for golf lessons. Becca Schulz ain’t never been no rig hand, and ATCO’s Rona Ambrose ain’t ever been no linewoman, but she has always been plugged in.
Trump has pulled back the curtain to reveal where the money is in politics. It has been evident in Alberta for decades when we hung up on AGT and liquored up retired Tory cabinet ministers like James Francis Dinning OC, ECA Progressive Conservative politician and businessman (Hand and glove), and now is on the board of directors of several Canadian companies after dismantling ALCB -just to get warmed up.
Hell, Alberta was whistling Dixie while sending a paycheque to Doc Anderson MLA, MD for St.Paul AB. all the way to Tennessee.
It is becoming difficult to keep track of how many appointments to Boards of Directors Smith will be part of after she leaves politics. My guess is she will be on the Boards of foreign owned coal companies, AI data centres, private hospitals, insurance companies, oil companies, utilities and private schools.
Great! Lets just screw the citizens of Alberta again. First we’re on the hook for a pipeline and now an nat gas power plant to supply energy to an AI data center. How much is this going to cost us? How much is Smith and her merry little breezes putting in their pocket? And they’re doing this, all under the guise of bring costs down and protecting our electrical future. Bullshit. It’s all about being on the take! Smith and the UPC are POISON! Not only to the Alberta tax payer, but to our natural environment and to Canada as well.
Editorial query: why did you have to go the State of Minnesota’s web page to get a photo of Premier Kinew? He’s not only Canada’s most popular provincial premier, but a former CBC journalist. There must be a wealth of head shots of him on Canadian sites …
Jerry: It is astonishingly difficult to get royalty free photos of Canadian politicians. Many of these photos are locked up by U.S.-based photo services. Almost all, including some that shouldn’t be, have some cyber-poaching corporation trying to squeeze some cash out of them. In some cases these agencies are trying to collect royalties on photos that are in the Public Domain. They have a reputation for aggressively going after people who use photos without payment to them, seeking extortionate payments. Some politicians – Danielle Smith and before her Rachel Notley, also Justin Trudeau – have good royalty-free photo sources on Flickr. Many more don’t. Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney, for example. In many cases, one is restricted to using one of two or three good photos, or searching through hundreds of shitty out-of-focus shots badly posed with unidentified people on their social media sites, if they even have those. Mr. Poilievre allows no shots of himself not wearing his trademark sh!t-eating smirk. Usually I start with Wikipedia and go from there. When you go to Wikipedia to look for a photo of Wab Kinew – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wab_Kinew – what do you find available and royalty free? Why, an excellent shot from the Flickr account of Gov. Walz and Lt. Gov. Flanagan. Now go to Google and search Wab Kinew/Images for what comes up and see how have Creative Commons licenses or are otherwise royalty free or otherwise not likely to create a copyright problem. Not many. In this morning’s search, just one, although there are more if you are persistent. That one appears to have been taken more than 20 years ago and might not even be of Mr. Kinew. I always give credit for the source of the photo and I will continue to use photos from foreign sources. Of the very few of Mr. Carney available for months, one of the best came from the European Union, another from the World Economic Forum, the dreaded WEF. One other thing, in the United States a wonderful photographer named Gage Skidmore posts thousands of photos of prominent American politicians under Creative Commons licenses online. I am very grateful to him for this act of charity. How I wish there was someone like that in Canada. DJC
“This likely means household electricity costs for Albertans will keep rising in the years ahead.”
Relying entirely on the misinformation and disinformation from the various political actors (in their role as hustlers and peddlers interested in inflaming popular enthusiasm for both profiteers and large corporate interests and their money making schemes involving real or imagined innovations) , distracts from those adverse consequences noted above, by avoiding discussions about the negative realities experienced in other jurisdictions regarding both data centers and LNG exports.
See for example:
https://ieefa.org/articles/lng-exports-boom-australians-pay-price
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/gas-exports-have-tripled-australian-gas-prices-and-doubled-electricity-prices/
A naive citizenry that is easily manipulated seems to enjoy being deceived repeatedly, as human history abundantly demonstrates that the future and the past are largely synonymous.
It’s cyclical. Human beings are prone to produce dominance hierarchies. Those hierarchies are prone to destabilizing to the point of collapse, at which point a new dominating elite emerges. So the future and the past are synonymous. Any hope for less brutal and exploitative hierarchies is dependent upon the capacity of people to recognize these inherent risk as and to mitigate them.
250 years later the strident appeal to exercise caution is conveniently not even remembered, let alone adhered to, because in human societies wealth is power and power is wealth.
“The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order (i.e., the “dealers”; where, “In The Wealth of Nations, “dealers” refers to merchants, wholesalers, manufacturers, and inland traders. These are the individuals who employ “stock” (capital) to move goods from producers to consumers. Today, these historical dealers have evolved into global supply chain operators, multinational corporations, institutional investors, and digital retail platforms.”
The political actors in their role as de facto lobbyists for those same dealers and their interests are a vital component in the equation should never be forgotten, let alone overlooked.)
, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
“Mr. Pickup argued such projects should instead have in part relied on cheaper renewable alternatives, such as wind, solar and battery storage – all of which, unfortunately, are illogically anathema to Ms. Smith and the UCP Government.” On the contrary, it is perfectly logical. Danielle Smith works for the oil and gas industry.
We don’t need data AI centers. She needs to fix healthcare, public education, and stop price gouging people when it comes to electricity and heating. Absolutely no one is gonna make money off of that data center, except for the rich, f**** billionaires who are putting it in
Is Alberta premier Danielle Smith’s Greenlight Electricty Centre (GEC) near Edmonton channeling former BC premier Christy Clark’s Site-C Dam on the Peace River? The comparisons are remarkable.
Both women returned to politics after stints as radio talk-show hosts fielding phone-in right-wing opinion, a kind of purgatory earned by either one, coincidentally, in the field of pubic education; in Christy’s case it was refuge from her brief portfolio as BC education minister in which she provoked one of the longest court challenges in provincial history for tearing up a legally negotiated teachers’ union contract; in Danielle’s case for convincing several MLAs of the Wildrose Opposition of which she was leader to cross the floor with her to the governing ProgCon caucus.
Both availed the ousters of the founders of two new right-wing parties halfway through a term by winning caretaker-premier-without-a-seat in the by-elections that resulted. Christy took over the scandal-plagued BC Liberal party which her predecessor, Gordon Campbell, effectively founded by usurping a real, centrist Liberal party and turning it sharply rightward; Campbell was eventually canned by his cabinet midst the Hybridized Sales Tax scandal he created by promising not to impose the HST during the previous election, but then doing it anyway early in his 3rd-term—which he hardly made it halfway through. Similarly, Danielle won the UCP leadership from the party’s founder, Jason Kenney, who was similarly ousted by anti-vaxxer party members midst the Covid debacle he himself created by shilly-shallying on pandemic protocols, around the halfway mark of his and the UCP’s first term in power.
Not without some controversy and difficulties did both Christy and Danielle eventually win seats in their respective legislative assemblies. Both led their governing parties to incumbent majority wins, both against their NDP Oppositions. Both wins were somewhat surprising considering ongoing political boners and more-substantiated scandals. Both had won first mandates either could call her own, and both became their province’s 2nd female premier (following BC Socred Rita Johnston and Alberta ProgCon Allison Redford, respectively).
Of course Smith has not yet completed the first mandate of her own so we can only infer, albeit strongly, that she and Christy were (are) politically gormless enough to be manipulated by factions and private interests which don’t prioritize the public good. However, the GEC announcement affords a good comparison of a similar tactic —one could even say a psephological one—that both appear to have deployed. It’s a fairly good inference that they both had(have) the same reason for doing so—that is, despite and because of their respective levels of political ineptitude, they’re sensing—or have had sense made to them by extraordinarily persistent or courageous advisors that the next election will prove very difficult for them.
Of course everybody wonders, with the benefit of hindsight, how either Christy or Danielle won their own mandates that their electorates lived to regret in the first place. Go figure…
Christy’s Site-C policy was unpopular since before she was failed candidate for her university student council presidency. It had been resurrected and re-burried before; in her reiteration, critics said the highly controversial Dam far exceeded BC’s forecast electricity needs and would be as exceedingly expensive. But as the 2017 election neared and the Dipper’s new leader John Horgan’s numbers suggested the possibility of losing power, Christy publicly vowed to get Site-C construction past the point of no return by election day. Imagine that! Vowing to do the unpopular to save her psephological arse.
The policy —or threat, take it as you will—seemed to fit Christy’s now-notorious political incompetence, but there was at least some method to her madness in that Site-C allowed her to cultivate her typically one-note sloganeering that natural NDP opposition to the Dam made them “The Party of No.”
If BC elected the NDP, Christy warned, it would say “no” to all resource development in BC forever. Nobody expected her to make sense, but retrospectively you can’t argue with success—if winning a one-seat minority in 2017 could be so called. One could also espouse an alternative view that the several NDP wins in key urban seats in densely populated southwestern BC resulted from her spending too much time prancing upon the concrete foundations of Site-C in the far, remote northeastern plains of the province. Those urban seats were crucial in winning a resounding NDP majority in 2020. Christy subsequently resigned both her leadership and Assembly seat after the Governor told her it was all over.
One might also attribute the BC Greens’ unprecedented 3-seat win to their own strong opposition to Site-C. The ultimate consequence was a Green-Dipper parliamentary alliance which toppled Christy’s minority on its very first bill.
That one-seat minority was, nevertheless, quite an accomplishment given how badly the BC Liberals governed during Christy’s 1st mandate of her own. Perhaps that’s why she argued to the Governor that non-confidence vote should trigger an new election, doubtlessly one which would feature “The Party of No” rhetoric which actually won the BC Liberals their fifth mandate in a row—for about a month before the Assembly reconvened for Throne Speech. Again, Her Excellency denied Christy’s request.
We can forget for the moment that Horgan was forced to complete Site-C despite promising he would shut it down if elected. Well, technically, he wasn’t elected Premier (instead toppled Christy’s minority), so there’s that. And forget for the now that the sudden fad and attendant controversy about data centres kind turned out to rationalize what the power critics once called superfluous. The Dam was recently renamed The John Horgan Dam in the late Premier’s memory. Oh, how times have changed!
But recall that the Site-C ploy almost won a proven perfidious party a fifth term! Does anyone suppose Danielle Smith might be setting up a “Party of No” tactic in anticipation of strong Dipper opposition to GEC? It is, after all, proposed for the mostest, Dipperest part of the Alberta. Unlike a dam, an AI data centre might be located anywhere—so why where it will surely incite the harshest opposition?
I’ll be more convinced if—or when—Smith starts referring to the Alberta NDP as “The Party of No.” Wait for it, my Alberta friends: it darn near worked for one of BC’s worst governments ever. The UCP easily qualifies in Alberta.
I think it might be interesting to add that these AI data centres are normally made of high-end graphic cards for their modular processing capability; and as many of our gaming kids can inform, they are very quickly outmoded….so, these data centres are going to need a continual supply of cash to keep up with their competition and avoid falling into disrepair.
Just another money-pit: one thing the Government of Alberta is good at building.
We all know she will build it, she will spit on us, and our great democratic system once again proves as bad as any dictatorship. God save Canada and our so called democracy. What a joke this all is, Is it even worth the discussion?
NOTHING can be done, they decide, they corrupt and they do whatever they want. In what way is this different then any other corrupt system? Is it any wonder the world is rejecting this crap?
Marc Carney is another failure to all of us, another neo-con in a values fur coat. Embarrassing.
By the way is there any way to get a cork down the American Ambassador’s throat? Again the government say nothing, do nothing because we do not have the balls to fight these American monkeys. Call this guy and tell him to pack his luggage and get out. Where is the prime minister? Hiding from MAGA or giving them a voice in our affairs? Enough of this shit.
My late father was a Power Plant Engineer and everything he said would happen under Deregulation has happened and it isn’t going to stop. Albertans are being treated like morons by these Reformers because they know they can. Some seniors have claimed they are doing a wonderful job and don’t care about the huge financial mess they are creating for our children and grandchildren’s future that’s how stupid they are.