Plans for a large data center campus near Calgary, Canada, have been turned down by councillors

The campus, named the Rocky View Technology Park, would have occupied 450 hectares of land near Highway 566 and Range Road 282 in Rocky View County, northeast of Calgary. It would have contained multiple data centers and a 900MW power plant.

On September 9, the Rocky View County Special Council voted 6-1 to reject the proposal after approximately 10 hours of deliberation, with more than 50 speeches and submissions made in opposition.

The proposer, Canadian power generation firm Kineticor Asset Management, had submitted an Area Structure Plan (ASP) which would have rezoned the land parcel from ‘agriculture – general’ to ‘special, data center district overlay B’.

Kineticor Asset Management is backed by Calgary-based urban planning consultancy B&A Studios, engineering consultancy Cima+, and management consulting firm Nichols Applied Management.

Concerns about the speed and transparency of the planning process, the facility’s potential environmental impact, its impact on water and electricity usage, and the effect on neighboring agriculture were mentioned.

Executive vice-president of development and operations for Kineticor, Raymond McKay, told CTV News: “While today’s outcome was not what we had hoped for, we respect the consideration of Rocky View County council. We want to thank the county’s administration team for their thorough technical review of the application and support through the process.”

Calgary, the largest city in the western province of Alberta, has seen an influx of interest from data center operators. This includes hyperscalers AWS and Microsoft, as well as other developers, including Beacon AI Centers, which is currently pursuing a 400MW campus near the City of Chestermere, another 400MW site outside Indus, and one more in Foothills County.eStruxture has also announced plans to build a 90MW facility in Rocky View County.