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Alberta’s largest electricity producer says it has secured financial horsepower from Brookfield Corp. and Canada Pension Plan’s investment arm to fuel its ambitions to attract a data centre to a site west of Edmonton.
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TransAlta Corp. said Friday it signed a memorandum of understanding with Brookfield and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to bring a data centre project to its Keephills generation station.
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“As experienced global infrastructure investors, they have the capability to deliver projects of this size and complexity,” Joel Hunter, TransAlta’s chief financial officer and incoming chief executive, said on the company’s quarterly earnings call.
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TransAlta is one of many Alberta companies hoping to gain a foothold in a market in which U.S. tech giants are looking to build facilities to store the brains — the computing capacity — of their artificial intelligence systems.
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The group that oversees the province’s grid has received dozens of requests for power from data centre projects, enough to overwhelm the system. In response, the Alberta government is encouraging data centre companies to bring or build their own power, or team up with generators.
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The Alberta Electric System Operator approved TransAlta’s request to sell about 230 megawatts of power to a data centre, though the company and its new partners have not publicly identified any customers.
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Last fall, the generator also secured rezoning approvals from the local municipality, Parkland County, allowing for data centre development on 3,000 acres of TransAlta’s land around its Keephills and Sundance power plants.
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The company’s MOU with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Brookfield outlines the terms of what would be a phased development of a high-tech warehouse in central Alberta, beginning with its 230-megawatt facility.
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The three companies would also explore potential projects that would require up to a gigawatt of power, enough to keep the lights on for an entire city.
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During their fourth-quarter earnings call, TransAlta executives declined to offer any further details of the MOU.
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Chief executive John Kousinioris said the company is “actively engaged” in discussions with the provincial government in the hopes of connecting to more data centres.
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Kousinioris told analysts two of its mothballed power generators would “provide a pretty clear path” to providing the gigawatt of electricity that TransAlta’s MOU aims for.
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“Our view is that it will be critically important for the province to be able to rely on under-utilized generation, in essence, as a form of bring-your-own-power,” he said. “I think we’ve been heard on that.”
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TransAlta reported a net loss attributable to common shareholders of $190 million for 2025, compared to a $177-million profit a year earlier. Still, the company raised its dividend to investors to seven cents per share.
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