Trump wants AI data centers to bring their power. Alberta has been doing this since the beginning

Albertans who listened to the U.S. president’s State of the Union address last week may have experienced a sense of déjà vu when it came to Donald Trump’s plans for AI data centres: “We’re telling major tech companies that they have an obligation to meet their own power needs.”

In Alberta, the UCP government has been supporting “Bring up your own generation” Plan to attract models 100 billion dollar investment For AI data centers.

And while the US has developed far more AI infrastructure, Alberta also sees a big opportunity to capitalize on the AI ​​boom, given what its cool climate, vast real estate and unregulated electricity market has to offer.

Here’s how Alberta’s data center buildout compares to the U.S. so far.

a phased approach

Facing unprecedented demand from companies trying to connect to the province’s grid, Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) identified 1,200 MW This could be additional to large load data center projects without compromising grid reliability, as announced last June.

Frank Felder, a U.S. independent power consultant who works with data centers, said there has been a different approach in many wholesale power markets in the U.S., where the rush to build data centers has at times outweighed capacity concerns.

Felder said regional transmission organizations and independent system operators (independent organizations that oversee the generation and delivery of electricity to consumers in deregulated markets) in the U.S. are not taking a phased-in approach like Alberta’s.

“These markets don’t say, ‘Look, we can connect next year, you know, 1,000 megawatts of data centers’ or whatever the number is. The data centers just connect, and then everybody scrambles,” he said.

“The concern is that more data centers are being added than new supply is being added to meet this additional load. What will then happen to wholesale prices and reliability?”

according to Pew Research CenterA non-partisan think tank projects US data centers will consume more than four percent of the country’s total electricity in 2024 – roughly equal to the annual electricity demand of the entire country of Pakistan.

By 2030, electricity consumption by US data centers is projected to increase 133 percent.

Alberta’s AI data center buildout, in contrast, is more recent than that in the US and while several large data center projects have been proposed, including A huge complex in Olds, Alta.Many are in the early stages of approval or construction.

Ryan Lee, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta, called Alberta’s approach “diligent”, and said AESO “knows the grid better than anyone else.”

“And I think this is a reasonable amount of power (1,200 megawatts) to connect these data centers in the first place,” the limit currently represents less than 10 per cent of the province’s total power load.

In 2024, at the start of Alberta’s effort to attract AI data centres, Technology Minister Nate Glubish said Alberta would be an attractive landing spot for companies because its deregulated electricity market allows off-grid power generation.

“Really our power system … is not built to power those data centers, not at this scale. That’s why the policy is, first of all, bring in your own generation because there’s not enough power to power them,” Lee said.

electricity prices

During Trump’s State of the Union address last week, he introduced an initiative called the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” to shift the cost of AI-driven electricity from consumers to technology companies.

AI systems require massive amounts of computing power, which comes from servers stored in data centers. Those data centers require a lot of electricity to power and cool the machinery. As utilities in the US seek to meet the huge demand for electricity from AI, in many cases, the cost of the grid upgrade has been passed on to the everyday consumer.

A 2025 report The Center for American Progress found that utility costs are rising across the US due to the increased electricity demand of AI data centers. Residents of at least 41 states are facing higher electricity and gas bills.

Felder said residents in the US are pushing for data centers potency Became a rallying cry. A report Data Center Watch, a project run by AI security company 10A Labs, has revealed that community opposition to data centers is intensifying, with an estimated US$98 billion of US projects blocked or delayed in the second quarter of 2025.

A similar sentiment is growing in Alberta. AI infrastructure projects have also seen rejection or retaliation, such as Kineticore proposal in Rocky View County.

provincial Utility Law Amendment ActThe former Bill 8, which was passed last December, paves the way for AI data center projects to generate their own electricity. The Act also requires data center developers to pay for any upgrades to the power transmission system to support the large amounts of power consumed by the centers.

At a November press conference, Affordability and Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf was asked what was stopping data center proponents from taking their business elsewhere, such as Virginia or Georgia.

He responded: “The thing that other jurisdictions are facing now is that these data centers are built where they were built, and there were a lot of additional costs that ratepayers had to absorb and then, looking back, they have to try to make those adjustments and changes and that’s what’s holding them back.

“We get to do that ahead of time gives them a clear vision, gives them long-term stability on those costs and we’re still competitive with all those parts and pieces.”

grid reliability

in your latest long term reliability assessmentThe North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC – which assesses grid reliability in Canada and the US – found that more than half of regions face resource challenges due to massive data center growth over the next 10 years.

According to NERC, PJM Interconnection, the largest power grid operator in the US (which covers Virginia, home to the largest data centers in the world) is at “high risk” for power outages over the next two years, and at “high risk” through 2029.

Also in Canada, grid reliability is challenged, with data centers and other increased electrification placing increasing power demands on power systems, while climate change-induced extreme weather events and aging existing infrastructure are deteriorating.

While AESO’s phased approach is intended to maintain reliability for now, Lee said the challenge is that demand for AI data center buildouts is growing so fast that the grid may not be able to keep up.

“Alberta, for example, our grid is not very strong … it’s kind of independent. (It) doesn’t really have a very strong connection to other jurisdictions. So it’s even more important that we really have to maintain the stability of the grid, make sure it’s operational.”