How Canadian Datacentres are meeting AI's energy demands

As demand for datacentres increases in an AI-focused world, organizations are struggling to provide sufficient capacity, not only in compute power, but in the infrastructure to run it. There just isn't enough power available to push the bits and cool the hardware necessary to keep the datacentres running smoothly.

In fact, in a 2024 report, Goldman Sachs Research estimated that datacentre power requirements would grow by 160 per cent by 2030, in part because efficiency gains from improved technology have dwindled. It noted, "Goldman Sachs Research estimates the overall increase in data center power consumption from AI to be on the order of 200 terawatt-hours per year between 2023 and 2030. By 2028, our analysts expect AI to represent about 19% of data center power demand."

However, a report by the Canadian energy regulator pointed out that Canada is still an attractive location for datacentres thanks to its relatively low electricity prices in some regions, its climate, and its significant renewable and clean electricity resources.

That, however, doesn't mean that datacentre operators in Canada are sitting on their hands. Sustainability initiatives are not only environmentally friendly, they can save operators a lot of money as their power requirements decline. 

We asked five corporations who run datacentres in Canada how they're addressing the issue.

"Datacentres consume a lot of electricity, and AI workloads consume on average 10 times the energy of typical cloud workloads," observed Marc Mondesir, managing director, Equinix Canada, which operates 15 datacentres in eight locations across Canada, and whose parent company runs a total of 270 facilities worldwide. "Power management and sustainability are critical to creating a well-regulated and responsible AI strategy."

He said that Equinix, as well as using clean and renewable energy in most of its datacentres, is both shifting to more power-efficient cooling technologies and making use of the heat removed from the datacentres for other purposes.

In Toronto, for example, it is using Deep Lake Water Cooling from Enwave in one of its main datacentres, which Mondesir said leads to a 50 per cent or greater energy saving compared to other cooling methods, Another Toronto area datacentre exports the heat extracted from its systems, in partnership with Markham District Energy, to supply domestic hot water to multiple buildings. 

Cisco also focused on cooling first when asked about its sustainability initiatives. Denise Lee, VP for Cisco's engineering Sustainability Office, noted that new chips coming onto the market can't physically be air cooled, so liquid cooling in some form is moving more into the datacentre. Although it's not a new technology, she said, "we have quickly seen a convergence of certain architectures that are emerging as 'the winning architectures' to be able to be adopted at more speed and scale, for various reasons." And the decision on those winning architectures is often a power and rack density issue. To that end, Cisco has been participating in the development of new rack designs with improved cooling and power distribution systems.

"I think the number one piece is power," Lee said. "Everything will come down to power: access to it, cost of it, and safe distribution of it." 

Cost-effective hydroelectricity from BC Hydro is a solution for Bell Canada's new AI Fabric facilities in Kamloops, British Columbia. And on the cooling side, they tie into the local District Energy System (DES), explained Dan Rink, president, Bell AI Fabric. This allows them to distribute waste heat to warm approximately 2,000 homes via the DES, a centralized system that pipes steam, hot water, or chilled water to buildings in the community, eliminating the need for individual furnaces or air conditioners.

To drive down power use per AI request, he added, Bell has partnered with Groq, which he described as "the most efficient and environmentally friendly AI Inference chip manufacturer." And while he can't yet enumerate results because the facility has just gone live, he pointed out that its power usage effectiveness (PUE), which measures the ratio of total power consumption in a facility to the energy delivered to computing equipment, is less than 1.1, a very efficient rating.

Microsoft, too, has ambitious goals.

"Microsoft is committed to becoming carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste by 2030, and these goals are embedded into how we design, build, and operate datacentres globally — including in Canada," said John Weigelt, national technology officer, Microsoft Canada. 

In Canada, he noted, the company uses circularity by design principles such as reusing server 

parts and packaging. AI-powered workload optimization helps increase energy efficiency, and the company is piloting grid-interactive UPS batteries to provide backup power and reduce strain on the electric grid.

In addition, direct-to-chip cooling saves over 125 million litres of water per facility per year, he said.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) also focuses on power and water usage, said Prasad Kalyanaraman, VP of infrastructure services, AWS. The company has developed simplified electrical and mechanical designs to reduce hardware failures and reduce energy use, in addition to creating cooling, rack design, and control systems, unveiled in 2024, that he said will allow AWS to deliver 12 per cent more compute power per site for customer workloads.

"Our holistic approach minimizes both energy and water consumption in our data center operations and guides the development of our water use strategy for each AWS Region," he noted. "It starts with evaluating climate patterns, local water management and availability, and opportunities to use sustainable water sources. For example, in Montreal, we use free-air cooling instead of water for about 95 per cent of the year to cool our data centres."

And for regions where year-round air cooling isn't practical, a new closed loop liquid cooling system is can be deployed in new and existing datacentres, he said, with no changes to existing air cooling systems in the facility.