Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Boundary Dam Power Station, with its carbon capture plant on the left. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
The new data centre in Regina has big implications for coal in Estevan and Coronach
Editor’s note: This is a breaking story, and additional quotes may be added as they become available.
REGINA – Regina will soon be home to a new, massive artificial intelligence (AI) data centre, and Saskatchewan’s available, dispatchable baseload power, is a key part of that. That includes the refurbishment of the coal-fired power generation fleet.
Premier Moe joined Mirko Bibic, President and CEO of BCE Inc and Bell Canada made the announcement in Regina on March 16.
“The announcement of this facility is great news for Saskatchewan’s economy,” Moe said. “This investment by Bell Canada will create jobs, strengthen provincial research capacity and facilitate the creation of new businesses built on advanced capabilities.”
Premier Scott Moe making the data centre announcement on March 16. Facebook/Ken Cheveldayoff
The 90,000 square foot data centre development is expected to begin construction this spring in the Rural Municipality of Sherwood, according to a Government of Saskatchewan release.
This project, and associated partnerships with Bell, will position Saskatchewan as a national leader in sovereign AI infrastructure, the release said. AI workloads will use Bell’s and their tenant’s AI computing platforms and stored within Bell’s sovereign AI cloud. Bell will reserve a significant portion of the compute power for sovereign workloads, ensuring data remains within Canada, meeting strict chain-of-custody and residency requirements.
“Through Bell AI Fabric, we are building a digital backbone to power the future of AI in Canada,” Bibic said. “Bell’s largest-ever investment in Saskatchewan will deliver the high-performance compute necessary to innovate at speed, creating a competitive advantage for the province and the country. We are excited to partner with the Government of Saskatchewan to deliver much-needed AI infrastructure for our customers and for Canada.”
Large load demand
Those coal refurbishments will bring back into service Boundary Dam Units 4 and 5, a total of 278 megawatts. Not so coincidentally, this data centre will require 300 megawatts of baseload power.
On a typical day, SaskPower has ample coal and natural gas-fired power capacity to fill those 300 megawatts. But restoring those two units will definitely be of benefit. More on that later.
Also, to put that 300 megawatts into perspective – when the BHP Jansen Potash Mine is up and running at full capacity, it is expected to require 300 megawatts. That’s why SaskPower is currently building the Aspen Power Station, with a 370 megawatt capacity, not too far away. So this data centre, alone, will be roughly equivalent in power demand to the largest potash mine in the world, once its completed several years from now.
And SaskPower routinely says one megawatt is roughly equivalent to the load demand from 1,000 households. So this data centre will be equal to the demand of roughly 300,000 households.
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Minister provides context
Pipeline Online spoke to Crown Investments Corp Minister Jeremy Harrison on March 16. It turns out most of the major Crown corporations were heavily involved with this file.
He said, “It’s a very exciting announcement. Bell Canada, along with the Government of Saskatchewan, are announcing a 300 megawatt AI Fabric project that bell has initiated, which will be $1.7 billion initial investment from Bell.”
AI Fabric is Bell’s artificial intelligence division, focused on “sovereign AI infrastructure, built by Canadians, for Canadians,” according to their website.
Harrison said, “The total value of the project will be about $12 billion, including the cost of the chips. It really is a generationally significant project, and only possible because here in Saskatchewan, we really are uniquely positioned in having base low power to allocate, and that is to do with our Energy Security Strategy, the decisions that we took therein.”
That Energy Security Strategy, which Harrison released on Oct. 20, 2025,hinges on refurbishing all three of Saskatchewan’s coal-fired power generation plants and running them for many years as a bridge to eventual nuclear power generation. It also includes bringing Boundary Dam Units 4 and 5, retired in recent years, back into operation.
Since then, Harrison announced in January SaskPower is being the technology selection for large-scale nuclear power reactors in the 1,000 megawatt rage. And in February he released a plan for beefing up Saskatchewan’s electrical transmission infrastructure, including expanding interties to Alberta and Manitoba.
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Harrison said, “This is going to be a project that creates, about 1600 jobs overall – 800 plus during the construction, 80 on site, and then full time once operational. And about 700 plus, there will be spin offs and directly associated with the facility when operational.
“And really this is a cornerstone of Canada’s AI data sovereignty, Canada’s information sovereignty, being able to have a facility of this, of this size. It will be the largest site in Canada and one of the largest in the world, if it were constructed and completed right now today. So really, it is a very, very significant project.”
SaskPower’s role is obvious. But SaskEnergy will be supplying the natural gas for the 300 megawatts of natural-gas fired backup power generation that will be built “behind the fence” for this facility. And to give some perspective on the value of that portion of the project alone, SaskPower is currently building the Aspen Power Station near Lanigan, with a 370 megawatt capacity, for $1.7 billion. So if Bell is building a similar scale power generation station – for backup – at a similar cost, that gives some idea of scale of this project.
Principal power for the data centre will come from SaskPower, Harrison explained, with an annual power bill expected to be “nine figures.” That’s hundreds of millions of dollars, per year.
SaskTel, which often works with Bell, will provide the connectivity to the greater world. And it’s placement near the centre of North America, will reduce latency (the time it takes for traffic on the internet to go from one site to another.) The release noted, “SaskTel’s extensive fibre optic transport network will provide resilient, diverse, and reliable connectivity, linking the state-of-the-art facility to Bell’s national fibre backbone. In addition, SaskTel and Bell will explore collaboration options regarding the development and delivery of AI powered products and services.”
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Location
The project is being built southeast of Regina, southeast of the Sask Polytechnic campus. That puts it in close proximity to a SaskPower substation and a few miles from the TC Energy mainline compressor station, south of White City. (SaskPower’s existing natural gas-fired power generation fleet currently uses about 90 per cent Alberta gas, meaning the backup generator will almost certainly draw from the TC Energy mainline via a short lateral which will likely be operated by SaskEnergy/TransGas.)
An existing natural gas line already passes through the site, Harrison said.
As for water use – a growingly contentious issues for data centres in some areas – Harrison said it would be a closed loop system. That means it won’t be a major draw on water.
Harrison also spoke of what he called a “cross-provincial partnership,” which he said was a “competitive advantage for Saskatchewan.” That partnership included the provincial government, the Crown corporations, post secondary institutions like the University of Regina and Sask Polytechnic, City of Regina, RM of Sherwood and George Gordon First Nation. “This is a relatively small place, and we all know each other. It really allows us to bring together all of the relevant partners in a very significant way,” he said.
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Lining up for baseload power
Potential customers have been lining up, according to Harrison, since the Energy Security Strategy announcement. This in particularly because data centres require “always on” power. That means dispatchable, baseload power, which in Saskatchewan comes principally for natural gas and coal, but also to a lesser extent, hydro.
Bell Canada, a major, national company, and a longstanding partner of SaskTel, was “chosen very deliberately,” Harrison said.
Dispatchable power, including coal
He also pointed out that data centres have been in the news in Alberta, where some are not going ahead because of the lack of available, dispatchable power. And it is because of that dispatchable, baseload power that projects like the Foran copper mine, as well as uranium mines, are going ahead, he explained.
Saskatchewan has been expanding its natural gas fired power generation in recent years, and indeed it is the largest contributor to the grid, at a nameplate capacity of 2,481 megawatts. On high demand days, most of that natural gas capacity is used. But coal is significant not only because of available capacity, but the fact that if it had gone away, Saskatchewan would be in a power shortfall instead of being able to meet demands from projects like these.
The restoration of Boundary Dam Units 4 and 5 will be just a part of the 1,520 megawatts of coal-fired power available, that 1,520 megawatts inclusive of when they are back up and running. And Harrison points to the whole coal fleet as being a big part of this.
That, in turn, will have spinoffs in the Estevan area. As those units were retired, mine workers were laid off as demand for coal production slackened. If coal-fired power generation increases, correspondingly there will be a need for more coal production, and more employment in that regard.
Doing this flies in the face of the federal coal regulations, which require Saskatchewan shut down its entire conventional coal fleet by 2030, in three years, nine months and 15 days from now. As the Saskatchewan government’s actions, through its Saskatchewan First Act, coal refurbishment and Energy Security Strategy had made plain, shutting down coal is not going to happen, and indeed it is key until such time nuclear power generation is up and running.
Conversely, without available coal power, this data centre announcement would have never happened.
The first 300 megawatt GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 small modular reactor is not expected to be online until 2034 at the earliest. And Saskatchewan would need five such reactors to replace its 1,520 megawatts of restored coal capacity, let alone account for any growth, such as the aforementioned data centre or mines. While large-scale, 1,000 megawatt reactors are now under consideration, that will take much longer to get electrons to the grid. So the coal refurbishment, on the supply side, and this data centre, on the demand side, bode well for coal in Saskatchewan for many years to come.
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Editor’s note: the following stories provide context over how this all came about.