Pembina Pipeline Corp. and partners have given a final investment decision to the Greenlight Electricity Centre, a $4.6-billion natural gas-fired power station northeast of Edmonton that will generate 932 megawatts to supply a data centre customer.
Project partners and ownership
The partners include Calgary-based Pembina, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, and Calgary’s Kineticor Asset Management. Pembina will own 47.5 per cent of the project, Morgan Stanley’s group will control 47.5 per cent, and Kineticor will hold the remaining five per cent.
Data centre customer speculation
The partners did not name the data centre customer, but previous reports and analyst research suggest Meta Platforms Inc. is tied to the project. A January report by TD Securities analyst Michael Elias said Meta plans to build a gigawatt-plus data centre in Edmonton.
Natural gas supply and infrastructure
The Greenlight project will require approximately 150 million cubic feet per day of natural gas. The partners have secured long-term commitments from producers to ship on Pembina’s and TC Energy Corp.’s pipeline systems, among other commercial arrangements.
Alberta’s strategy for data centres
Alberta has positioned itself as an attractive destination for data centre investment, which requires long-term, reliable power. The province has a glut of natural gas that has kept local prices low, and attracting power-hungry data centres provides a new market for the gas.
Quote from Morgan Stanley
“Reliable, dispatchable power is the foundation of the AI and cloud economy and Greenlight will deliver it at scale to one of Canada’s most important new data centre developments,” Chris Ortega, head of the Americas for Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, said in a release.
