Telus and the federal government have announced plans to significantly expand Canada’s AI compute infrastructure through a cluster of data centres in B.C.
Under the agreement, Telus will expand its existing Kamloops data centre later this year in addition to building two new Vancouver facilities in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood and the city’s downtown core. The Mount Pleasant centre will open at the end of the year and scale through 2028, while the 150 West Georgia facility will come online in 2029 and scale through 2032.
Telus says it plans for these facilities to be “some of the world’s most sustainable sovereign AI data centres” that “set a new global standard for sustainable AI infrastructure.” They’ll be powered by 98 per cent renewable energy and are designed to integrate into Vancouver’s local energy systems. The company says these facilities will use a closed-loop cooling system that can reduce cooling energy consumption by 80 per cent compared to traditional data centres and recycle electricity into carbon-free thermal energy to heat the equivalent of 150,000 homes. Water consumption will also be reduced by 90 per cent compared to traditional data centres.
Once the cluster is fully scaled, Telus and the government expect it to deliver roughly $9 billion in economic value to B.C., which includes the creation of more than 1,000 construction jobs and hundreds of operations roles.
The Telus agreement is part of the federal government’s larger initiative that was announced last year to identify and construct large-scale sovereign commercial AI data centres across Canada.
Source: Telus
