What is a participant involvement program?

It is the formal record of how a proponent notified, met with and responded to the people who may be directly and adversely affected by a project. The AUC reviews it as part of every power plant application, and a deficient program can stop an application from proceeding.

What happens if the participant involvement program is found deficient?

The AUC can decline to process the application until the gaps are addressed. The applicant can revise the program and refile. The main cost is time, which is usually the tightest constraint on these projects.

Do data centre projects trigger Indigenous consultation?

Where the project may affect Treaty or Aboriginal rights, yes. This is a legal duty, and recent Alberta court filings show the cost of skipping it. Indigenous groups should be identified early and engaged before approvals are sought.

Does reVerb work outside Edmonton?

Yes. We work across Alberta, including the rural counties and smaller communities where most data centre campuses are proposed.

Data Centre Engagement · Alberta

Data Centre Community Consultation and Engagement in Alberta

In Alberta, community engagement is built into the approvals a data centre depends on.

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Why this work exists

The public conversation starts before anyone announces anything.

In our experience on Alberta data centre projects, people hear about the project from a neighbour, a sign on a fence or a post in a community Facebook group. By the time anyone official speaks, social media has filled the gap, along with stories about how it went somewhere else.

Some of what comes back is about the project itself, the water and the land and the noise and whether the jobs are real and go to people who live in the region. The rest has nothing to do with the project, and no application will answer it. What artificial intelligence is for, who it is making money for, whether the people deciding these things can be trusted to say what they know.

By the time the website goes up, most people have already heard a version of the story.

Public consultation and engagement require early work. It starts with finding out what people are actually worried about, and what comes back is seldom what the technical material was written to address. From there the work is designing the programs that give people a real way into the project, and putting the engineering into language someone can understand. The information matters and it has to be right, and on its own it rarely settles how someone feels about the place they live, which is why firms like reVerb exist.

Where you sit

Find the side of the file you are on.

reVerb holds mandates on both sides of Alberta data centre files, and never on both sides of the same project.

For municipalities and counties

You are weighing an application

A council answers to the people who live there, whatever the project turns out to be. The obligation is transparency, so residents can see what was asked, what the answer was and how the decision got made.

A public process residents can follow
A record that holds up at the hearing
Council and administration prepared for the room

Municipal side For proponents and operators

You are bringing a project forward

A proponent carries the responsibility of building without harming the community, and of being transparent about how that is done. Doing that early, and on the record, is what a project needs to get built.

A participant involvement program built for the application
Concerns recorded and answered before filing
Engagement that starts while design is still open

Proponent side

Who regulates what

Six bodies shape the public process.

Municipality

Land use, permits and the public hearing

The municipality decides zoning, development permits, roads, emergency services and the standards for noise and light. Under the Municipal Government Act, a bylaw to amend the land use bylaw or to adopt or amend a statutory plan goes to a public hearing, and on these projects that statutory plan is often an area structure plan (ASP). A development permit for a use the bylaw already permits does not.

Sources: Alberta Environment and Protected Areas, data centre regulatory role and proponent-led Indigenous consultations

What shapes a project

The Alberta data centre landscape

Data centre site selection in Alberta

The sites selected for these projects have to be near power, water, land and fibre. Alberta adds a requirement that other jurisdictions do not necessarily have. A project has to bring its own generation (BYOG). Being completely remote is rarely an option, which makes the assessment of community impact more important, and not every project clears it. In August 2026 the Alberta Utilities Commission refused a 1.4 gigawatt power plant for a data centre at Olds, finding the site too close to the surrounding community and the location not justified. Roughly 1,500 parties sought standing in that hearing.

Water use and cooling design

Water and cooling are among the first things a community asks about, especially after recent dry summers. Water use at data centres elsewhere has been a live issue, and people arrive with that in mind. They want to know what this design uses and where the water comes from, and those answers need to be ready before the question gets asked in public.

Noise from on-site power and cooling

Generation and cooling equipment run continuously, so the noise question is about what the site sounds like at night and at the property line. It is one of the concerns raised most consistently on industrial projects near homes, and it stays live after a project is operating.

Public concern about artificial intelligence

Public feeling about artificial intelligence arrives with the project and runs well past it. People raise job losses, who the technology is really serving and how much of this they are expected to take on trust. Whether this should be built here at all is part of that, and it does not resolve on a fact sheet about one project.

A decade of embedded communications and engagement support

reVerb was my trusted advisor and communications partner on the Valley Line LRT program for over a decade. Each and every day, reVerb showed up with expertise, creativity, business acumen and a passion for project success. reVerb always had the client's best interests in mind when navigating the complex world of public communication, marketing and stakeholder engagement.

Brad Smid

Former LRT Project Delivery Director, City of Edmonton | Current Assistant Deputy Minister, Alberta Infrastructure

Common questions

Data centre consultation in Alberta, answered.

Who decides whether a data centre gets built?

No single body. The municipality decides land use. AESO controls transmission access and grid connection. The AUC reviews the generation. The AER covers the gas supply, wells and pipelines feeding on-site power. Environment and Protected Areas handles water, air emissions and wastewater. The Aboriginal Consultation Office assesses whether Indigenous consultation was adequate, which comes before several of those approvals. A data centre is not itself an AUC-approved facility.

Does an Alberta data centre need community consultation?

If the project includes on-site power generation of one megawatt or more, yes. AUC Rule 007 requires participant involvement before the application is filed, with the records either filed or retained depending on the size of the plant. Where gas pipelines or wells feed that generation, AER Directive 056 adds its own participant involvement requirements. Municipal rezoning brings a separate public process.

Does a data centre need a public hearing?

It depends on the land use bylaw. Where a data centre is already a permitted use, the development permit does not go to a public hearing. One Alberta county publishes this position on its development page. Where a project needs a land use bylaw amendment, or an area structure plan (ASP) adopted or amended, the Municipal Government Act requires a public hearing before second reading.

When should consultation start?

Before the public announcement. The engagement record needs to show a relationship that developed over time, which means the first conversations happen well ahead of any rendering or press release.

Do you work for municipalities and proponents both?

Yes, on separate files. reVerb does not act for both sides of the same project.

The best time to start is before the announcement.

The earlier the conversation starts, the more there is to work with. If you are weighing a proposal, entering the Alberta market or preparing a Rule 007 application, we would like to hear where things stand.