Data Is the New Pipeline Battle

Over the past two decades we have watched battles over energy and natural resources play out very publicly in Alberta and across Canada. Those battles have had real consequences for our energy industry and major infrastructure development.

I’ve spent much of my career on the front lines of sour gas well battles, energy fights and pipeline wars. The projects and issues change, but the pressure architecture surrounding them is remarkably familiar.

We are starting to see it again with data centres.

Alberta is treating data centres as an economic-development opportunity to build a new technology base in the province. But as projects move from announcements to development, they are also confronting the questions that surround major infrastructure — electricity needs, water, emissions, land use and community effects.

And infrastructure attracts infrastructure politics.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Opposition and scrutiny are healthy parts of major project development. Communities should ask difficult questions. Regulators should test assumptions. Proponents should have to demonstrate why projects make sense and how effects will be addressed.

But experience tells us what can happen next.

A major project is announced. Local concerns emerge. Those concerns attract broader advocacy interests. The debate can shift from how should this project be built, to should this kind of development be happening at all?

Regulatory proceedings become political arenas. Investors face uncertainty. Governments discover that attracting investment and actually getting projects built are two very different things.

The interests involved aren’t all the same.

A landowner concerned about what is being built next door has a different stake than a national environmental organization concerned about gas-fired electricity generation. A municipality worried about water capacity may see things differently than one pursuing investment, jobs and a larger tax base. An Indigenous community concerned about treaty rights, consultation or cumulative effects may have different interests from another seeking economic participation and partnership.

Workers and local businesses have interests of their own. So do project proponents investing billions of dollars and looking for regulatory certainty, reasonable timelines and a return on that investment.

All have a place in the debate. But they do not have the same interests, objectives or stake in the outcome.

What matters is what happens when those different interests begin converging on the same project. That’s when a development debate can become something much larger.

Look at what is happening around Alberta data-centre proposals. The Synapse Olds project encountered significant regulatory problems, including concerns around siting and consultation. An early stage proposal near Vulcan has faced local opposition and questions about site suitability.

Environmental organizations and legal advocates are raising broader questions about whether Alberta’s environmental assessment and regulatory processes are adequate for developments of this scale.

That evolution matters.

The energy sector has seen that technical merit, regulatory compliance and economic benefits alone do not guarantee that a project will be built. Public acceptance, political durability and the ability to respond to organized pressure can become material to a project’s future. By the time those pressures are obvious, the debate may already have shifted.

The data centre discussion is moving beyond individual projects to how much electricity and water data centres should consume, how they should be powered, where they should be located, what environmental assessments should be required and who should bear the costs and effects.

None of this means those concerns are illegitimate. It means the battlefield is expanding. The tactics are familiar. The organizations and campaign infrastructure capable of entering the fight are formidable.

Alberta has seen this before. The lesson from earlier infrastructure battles is that engagement cannot begin after opposition has already organized and positions have hardened.

Unless governments, industry and proponents recognize the pattern and prepare early, they risk spending the next decade reacting to a debate others have already defined.

Shawn Howard is president of CORE Strategic Management and author of The Activist Playbook series.

**Originally published in the Calgary Herald on September 1, 2026 - https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/opinion-data-is-the-new-pipeline-battle.