The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada says construction of Meta’s one-gigawatt data centre north of Edmonton has advanced beyond the point at which the federal environment minister can designate it for assessment.
The November 10 decision turns on how far work had progressed at the Sturgeon County site. Under the federal Impact Assessment Act, designation brings a project into the federal review process so the agency can decide whether a full assessment is needed. But paragraph 9(7)(a) bars the minister from designating a project once the physical activity has “substantially begun.” The agency concluded that Meta’s project had crossed that threshold.
Meta broke ground on July 8. The company expects to invest more than $13 billion in the campus, its first in Canada, and estimates it will support about 3,000 construction workers at peak and more than 300 jobs once operational. The agency received the designation request on September 4.
The request also sought a joint assessment of the data centre and the proposed Greenlight Electricity Centre, a gas-fired generating station that would supply power to the campus. The federal registry describes a 1,750-acre data centre site that would draw electricity from Alberta’s grid and on-site generation. The agency had already reviewed Greenlight separately and determined that it required no further assessment under the Act.
That left a narrower question for the November decision. By the time the agency considered designating the data centre itself, it found that physical work had already put that option beyond the minister’s reach.