News tells you what happened this week. These pieces explain how the underlying systems work, so the next piece of news makes sense when it arrives. They are revised rather than replaced, and each carries the date it was last checked.
Four regulators, one municipality and a water licence. Only one of those steps has a public hearing, and it is not the one people are shouting about.
A plain walkthrough of every approval a data centre needs in Alberta, who decides each one, how long it takes, and the single point in the process where a resident has standing.
Read it →Last reviewed 2026-08-21
Wood Buffalo has three gigawatts of in-region generation, 1,631 shovel-ready acres and the coolest summers of any major North American city. The pitch is stronger than most people outside the region realise.
The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo is making a data centre case built on power, climate and an unusually credentialed workforce. It is a good case. Here is what is genuinely strong about it, and what a prospective operator will want answered before signing.
Read it →Last reviewed 2026-08-20
Alberta runs the only energy-only deregulated power market in Canada. Almost every technology story in the province eventually runs into it.
A plain explanation of Alberta’s power market: who builds generation, how prices are set, what the AESO does and does not control, and why data centres have to negotiate with it.
Read it →Last reviewed 2026-08-19
A practical map of the programmes, agencies and capital sources, and an honest account of where the gaps are.
Grants, tax credits, accelerators, seed funds and the later-stage gap: what exists in Alberta, what each is genuinely for, and what founders consistently get wrong about the sequence.
Read it →Last reviewed 2026-08-19
Interconnection queue, firm DTS, bring-your-own-generation, PUE, colocation, anchor tenant: what the vocabulary means and why each term matters.
A reference glossary for reading coverage of Alberta’s AI data centre buildout, with the distinctions that separate a real project from an announcement.
Read it →Last reviewed 2026-08-19