The province of Alberta, home to the world’s third-largest crude reserves, is making a push to become a hub for artificial intelligence data centres and sees the potential to attract $100 billion in investments.

The government is planning to introduce legislation, make regulatory changes and roll out new services to encourage technology companies to build data centres in the province. The strategy seeks to take advantage of Alberta’s abundance of natural gas for power generation, low taxes and cold climate, which could reduce firms’ cooling costs.

Alberta Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish said he’s already made four trips to Silicon Valley to meet with Nvidia Corp.’s Jensen Huang and pitch Apple Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. on building data centres in the province. A major component of Alberta’s push will focus on making sure the government offers better service to companies and allows them to get centres up and running quickly, he said.

“Time is money, and if we can give people the gift of time, we know that that’s going to have a meaningful impact on their investment decisions and on their return on investment,” Glubish said. “So if we can move fast and give people certainty and eliminate risk in the process, folks are going to love doing business in Alberta.”

The government has set a goal of having $100 billion worth of data centre infrastructure complete or under construction within the next five years, he said.

The government can move especially fast on infrastructure that’s not connected to the province’s power grid since a main concern is making sure that developments don’t compromise reliability or affordability for residents, Glubish said. The government will clarify rules for grid-connected infrastructure early next year, he said.

Bloomberg.com