The County of Barrhead in Alberta, Canada, is seeking to amend its land-use bylaw to allow data center developments on agricultural lands.

First reported by TownandCountry, the County of Barrhead council gave the amendment a first reading on a 5–0 vote, with a public hearing scheduled for February 3.

The proposal follows a request from the UAE-headquartered petroleum firm, Axiom Oil and Gas, which plans to co-locate an off-grid modular power plant with a data center near its gas plant in Manola. According to reports, the power plant would have a capacity of around 6MW of power and would initially support Bitcoin mining workloads.

The zoning change, however, would apply more broadly to data centers and high-performance computing facilities. County development officer Layne Mullen said the current land-use bylaw defines data processing facilities but does not permit them in any zone, meaning applications must be rejected outright.

“If an application were received for a data processing facility, we wouldn’t even be able to consider it,” Mullen said.

Under the amendment, data centers would become discretionary uses in agricultural districts, allowing the municipal planning committee to evaluate projects based on site conditions, infrastructure availability, and potential impacts.

“This gives the authority the ability to look at each application on a site-by-site basis and determine if it’s appropriate for that location,” Mullen said.

The bylaw also includes provisions to manage impacts from large computing facilities, including time-limited permits, setback requirements from homes, landscaping, noise assessments, and mitigation plans for dust, traffic, and odour.

Axiom said other Alberta municipalities, including Westlock, Sturgeon, and Beaver counties, have already adopted similar rules. The company argued that the project would support data center development by enabling on-site power, monetizing stranded natural gas, reducing flaring, and generating new tax revenue and local economic activity.

County officials noted that Alberta is actively promoting data center and AI facilities as part of its economic development strategy. Following approval from the municipal authorities, the amendment would need to acquire final authorization from the Alberta Utilities Commission.

Alberta is increasingly becoming a hotbed for data center development, boasting ample land and access to power. In total, approximately 29 data center projects are seeking a grid connection in the province.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the province had introduced a new bill to incentivize the development of self-powered data centers, creating a framework that would fast-track projects if they came with secured power.

Since then, there has been a proliferation of data center developers seeking to power their operations with on-site generation in the province.

This has taken the form of both small-scale modular deployments, such as Radiant Ridge Energy’s plan to deploy a 3MW natural gas-powered modular hydrocooled data center at a Nordcon gas production site. As well as large-scale plans, such as Crusoe’s agreement with natural gas-fired power provider Kalina Distributed Power to develop multiple colocated AI data centers powered by natural gas power plants in Alberta.