Two more data centre projects in Alberta are not being required to complete formal impact assessments, which would evaluate factors such as environmental effects: Synapse’s one-gigawatt data centre campus in Olds and the Woodland Cree First Nation-led Mihta Askiy data centre project, about 500 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

The exemptions come as the province has allowed celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary’s $70-billion, 7.5-gigawatt AI data centre project Wonder Valley, a proposal in northern Alberta, to bypass an environmental impact assessment.

“What we’re seeing here is a new sector that’s very resource intensive … including with respect to electricity generation and water use,” said David Wright, associate professor in the faculty of law at the University of Calgary.

“And yet at that very time when this new sector comes along, you see governments actually stepping back from environmental assessment and kind of going on faith that all is going to go well.”