Can a small town like Olds, Alta., handle massive AI data centres? Residents aren’t convinced

Olds residents are voicing their concerns and frustrations over a massive proposed data centre campus in the southern Alberta town that would offer up to 1,000 megawatts of electrical capacity to power Canada’s first AI supercluster — infrastructure that can be used by major AI hyperscalers like Meta and Google.

Synapse Data Center Inc., the majority Canadian-owned operator, has proposed a complex of 10 individual 100-megawatt data centres and an onsite 1,400-gigawatt natural gas plant that would satisfy the province’s push for new AI investments to bring their own power.

Olds is about 85 kilometres north of Calgary, and Synapse's campus would be built across 121 hectares of land in the town’s northeast at Highway 2A and Highway 27, close to residents. 

“I’m feeling absolutely sick about it,” said Olds resident Rachel Sorenson at an open house for the project last week. “I’m feeling sick about the lack of transparency, and then all of a sudden this is thrust on us.”

Sorenson is concerned about the town having the infrastructure and resources to accommodate such a large project without compromising its needs, such as emergency services.

“This is an AI data centre proposal 10 times larger than any existing one in Canada. I don’t think the scope of this is really setting into people of how big this is and how unknown this is,” she said.

Jason van Gaal, CEO and founder of Synapse, said Olds is a central location that’s accessible for its future customers: AI companies that will run their models from these facilities. He said the location was also chosen because of the town’s interest in hosting the major project.

Sandra Blyth, Olds’ economic development manager, called the private-sector investment a “game-changer for the town.”

“When you look at a $10-billion injection into a community of 10,000 people, the change is going to be enormous,” she said, citing job creation.

The data centre project is expected to create 1,000 jobs, according to Synapse.

Van Gaal said there is some training available for non-data centre experts to learn the work. And Blyth said the town is already in talks with nearby colleges to discuss training programs that could teach those specialized skills.

But for Olds resident Philip Finlay, the economic upsides may not outweigh the development the small town will need to keep up with the project.

“I think it's a big undertaking for a small municipal centre like Olds,” he said. “I know we're a fast and up-and-coming … location, but I don't know if we quite understand the full scale of what we're getting into.”

Finlay, who owns property across from the proposed data centre project site, said he hasn’t been approached for any studies or consultation on the development yet and has questions about potential noise pollution.