Alberta Rejects Plan to Turn Olds Into Canada’s Largest Space Heater for Emails
In a stunning blow to Alberta’s rapidly expanding ambition to turn electricity into warm, invisible thoughts, the Alberta Utilities Commission has rejected a proposal for what would have been Canada’s largest data centre.
The Synapse Data Centre project promised to consume as much power in a single day as the entire city of Edmonton, converting natural gas into a steady stream of emails, spreadsheets, and half-finished group chats.
Regulators cited missing information, internal inconsistencies, and what experts describe as “a general vibe of guessing,” noting the application failed to clearly explain how a 1.4 gigawatt power plant would responsibly fuel the digital equivalent of everyone refreshing the same webpage forever.
Residents of Olds expressed mixed reactions, with some relieved their town will not become “a very large, very loud brain,” while others mourned the loss of potential jobs maintaining servers dedicated primarily to storing passwords no one can remember.
The company has not ruled out reapplying, possibly with numbers this time.
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