New Brunswick’s first data-centre town has thoughts to share - CBC

Gus Rioux, who lives about half a kilometre from a data centre, said other politicians should look to how Grand Falls council responded to concerns. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)Social SharingGus Rioux was ahead of the curve in the public debate about data centres.

Long before proposals in Lorneville and Miramichi were stirring opposition, and long before the New Brunswick government was grappling with how to regulate the sector, Rioux was marching off to the Grand Falls town office, petition in hand.

“We would go outside and all of a sudden it would get really noisy,” said Rioux, who lives in a subdivision near an industrial park in what used to be the rural community of Saint-André. His home is about half a kilometre from the larger of two data centres in the park. 

“It was like a lawn mower, constantly,” he said. “It was loud.”

Saint-André was amalgamated into Grand Falls in 2023, making the two data centres the town’s problem.

What one N.B. town has learned from its data centres

Last month, its municipal council called on the province to impose a moratorium on new data centres or expansions until it can “adequately regulate” the sector.

“We’ve had a few inconveniences, and we wanted to make sure before they expand, or they build another one, that government puts some guidelines in so everything works well for the population,” Mayor Bertrand Beaulieu said.

“We’re not against the presence, or the expansion, of new data centres, but we want the province to set up guidelines before we go any further, because right now there are no guidelines.”

Grand Falls Mayor Bertrand Beaulieu said noise from the data centres was an issue, so the town held meetings with data centre owners, who agreed to monitor noise levels and report the numbers to the town every week. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)

In September, the Liberal government asked for input on a data centre policy framework.

Opponents say data centres, which house thousands of whirring computers, are noisy and consume vast amounts of electricity and water.

The province calls them “an economic opportunity” on its consultation web page.

Premier Susan Holt promoted the proposed Lorneville data centre at September’s Canada Investment Summit in Toronto.

Still, her government’s Oct. 20 speech from the throne said proposals that don’t meet new provincial standards won’t be allowed to go ahead.

The first two buildings in Grand Falls were built from 2019 to 2020 by GPU One to house a crypto currency mine, where thousands of computers run 24 hours a day trying to earn units of the digital currency.

Vancouver-based Hive Digital bought the company in 2021 and added two more buildings.

Meanwhile, a company called Taal Distributed Information Technologies Inc. acquired Chief Fuels, which was setting up another crypto mine in a former McCain fertilizer plant in the same industrial park.

The town says Chief Fuels is still listed as the operator of the other data centre in Grand Falls. Taal has since been amalgamated with a federally registered numbered company, whose owners could not be reached for comment on this story.

Last year, Hive Digital bought 13 more hectares of land at the Grand Falls site for possible expansion and announced its artificial intelligence subsidiary Buzz HPC would convert its crypto mine to an AI data centre.

Buzz president Craig Tavares said Canadian data centres are needed for data sovereignty.

If that computing power is in another country, “they can turn it off or take it away at anytime,” Tavares told CBC News.

The town says Chief Fuels is still listed as the operator of the other data centre in Grand Falls. Its owners could not be reached for comment on this story

Tavares said concerns about water consumption by data centres are overblown in Canada, and are based mainly on media reporting from the U.S., where centres in warmer southern states require cooling for longer periods of the year.

Last year, Hive Digital bought 13 more hectares of land at the Grand Falls site for possible expansion and announced its artificial intelligence subsidiary Buzz HPC would convert its crypto mine to an AI data centre. (Michael Heenan/CBC)

Buzz’s operation uses a closed-loop water system that doesn’t place a burden on the Grand Falls municipal water system.

Beaulieu confirmed that water consumption hasn’t been an issue for the town.

“It’s 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and it gets on people’s nerves,” Beaulieu said said.  “They can’t sleep at night. They can’t sit on the patio.”

The town held meetings with the data centre owners, who agreed to monitor noise levels and report the numbers to the town every week. 

Rioux said the Chief Fuels centre was quieter this summer.

The Grand Falls submission to the province points out that data centres can add to a municipality’s tax base, but they can also make a community too dependent on a single major industrial facility for revenue.

Construction creates jobs, but many workers come from outside the community, and there are few permanent jobs at the centres, it says.

Hive and Buzz say on their website that their data centres rely “entirely” on renewable energy.

In Grand Falls, they say the source is N.B. Power’s hydroelectric dam in the centre of town.

But electricity consumers don’t draw power exclusively from the closest generating station. It comes from the provincial grid, which is fed by whatever plants are running at the time.

“A large amount of generation resource that we consume is off hydroelectric,” Tavares acknowledged, “but there will always be again components of other generating type technologies.”

That includes wind, solar and nuclear, “and you’ll see a component of gas, too.”

Data centre critics have argued that the proliferation of centres will force utilities to add more carbon-emitting electricity generation to keep up with the demand for power.

In 2022, the combined electricity consumption of the Grand Falls plants, 96 megawatts, led the then-PC government of Blaine Higgs to exempt N.B. Power from having to service future crypto mines.

The utility has warned it’s facing potential shortfalls of electricity by 2028 and is planning a 500-megawatt natural gas plant in Tantramar to avoid that.

Tavares says Buzz’s substation at its Grand Falls data centre lets the company participate in “grid balancing” by sending electricity back to the grid when it has more than it needs.

He said data centre operators can overcome public and political opposition by being transparent about what they do and what the impacts will be.

“You combine all those together, you have the essence of a very pragmatic, very responsible data centre infrastructure that the community can embrace,” he said.

Hive and Buzz say on their website that their data centres rely 'entirely' on renewable energy. In Grand Falls, they say the source is N.B. Power’s hydroelectric dam in the centre of town, pictured here. (Michael Heenan/CBC)

The Grand Falls submission to the provincial review called for the use of independent experts and studies, detailed economic agreements and post-implementation monitoring.

It also urged the province to prioritize locations already zoned for industrial use and to assess the capacity of power and water systems to supply any future centres. 

“You’ve been heard,” the mayor told residents at the Oct. 20 council meeting where the town’s response was announced.

A spokesperson for the province said the government “is in the final stages of reviewing all the feedback and expects to release the policy in the coming weeks.”

Rioux said other politicians should look to how Grand Falls council responded to concerns.

“The people should be involved,” he said. “The people should have a voice, and not just for show, and for politics, but meaningful.

“Supposedly, we're in a democracy, so let's use that. Whatever the people decide, you have to live with.”

Jacques Poitras has been CBC's provincial affairs reporter in New Brunswick since 2000. He grew up in Moncton and covered Parliament in Ottawa for the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal. He has reported on every New Brunswick election since 1995 and won awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association, the National Newspaper Awards and Amnesty International. He is also the author of five non-fiction books about New Brunswick politics and history.