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After Intense Lobbying, Carney Allows Gas-Powered Data Centres in Alberta

Energy firm pushed federal officials to scale back clean-electricity rules tied to AI sector

The Alberta electricity company Capital Power, which is developing a new, large artificial intelligence data centre in the province powered by natural gas, lobbied the federal Mark Carney government dozens of times in 2025 to eliminate clean-energy regulations, DeSmog has learned.

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These regulations were subsequently dropped from a fossil fuel accord that the prime minister signed with the Government of Alberta this past November, allowing new, large data centres fuelled by gas turbines to proceed.

“We’ve got a new paradigm that allows us to look at growth capital” for Canadian gas-powered AI projects, Capital Power chief executive officer Avik Dey said in reaction to the Carney government announcing it would suspend the regulations.

The Edmonton-based power company communicated with the Carney government close to forty times between the time Carney was elected in April 2025 and the signing of the Canada–Alberta Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in November 2025, according to federal lobbying records analyzed by DeSmog, the investigative media outlet.

The MOU is an agreement between Canada’s federal government and Alberta wherein the federal government agreed, in principle, to support a new oil pipeline to the Pacific Coast, as well as special treatment for the province on a range of federal climate policies.

The MOU lists increasing oil production in Alberta as its first objective, while also suspending Alberta’s clean-electricity regulations and eliminating the oil and gas emissions cap. The same agreement also proposed the development of AI data centres in Alberta, a potential new use for the province’s considerable gas resources.

That agreement has been widely criticized by environmentalists and Indigenous communities.

The term “data centre” appears at least twenty-five times in notes from Capital Power’s interactions with the federal government, while the term “emissions” appears seventeen times, and “clean-energy........

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