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Alberta

Attention Culture Organizations! Grants for Culture Days are now available

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From the Province of Alberta

Communities and organizations are invited to apply for funding to host Alberta Culture Days events to showcase their arts, heritage, diversity and community spirit.

Albertans have the chance to discover, experience and celebrate arts and culture in their communities during Alberta Culture Days, Sept. 27–29.

“Our government is proud to support Alberta’s vibrant culture. Alberta Culture Days help us all better understand the arts, culture, diversity and community spirit in our province. Last year was one of our best yet, and we’re excited to see what 2019 brings. I encourage all communities and organizations to apply for an Alberta Culture Days grant to share their art, music, history and food this September.”

Ricardo Miranda, Minister of Culture and Tourism

Applications can be downloaded from the Alberta Culture Days grant website and submitted via mail. The deadline to apply is April 4.

Grants are open to cultural organizations, non-profit groups, venues and facilities, school and community groups, First Nation and Métis settlements, and post-secondary institutions. Eligible community organizations can apply for one of the following:

  • up to $10,000 for three days of programming as a Feature Celebration Site
  • up to $5,000 for two days of programming as a Host Celebration Site
  • up to $1,000 for one day of programming as a Pop Up Celebration Site

Last year, 471 events took place in 56 communities giving thousands of Albertans access to events to celebrate our culture, diversity and community spirit.

Alberta Culture Days is part of the National Culture Days initiative, where millions of people across Canada participate in Culture Days activities and programs.

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Alberta

Temporary Alberta grid limit unlikely to dampen data centre investment, analyst says

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From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Cody Ciona

‘Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests’

Billions of investment in new data centres is still expected in Alberta despite the province’s electric system operator placing a temporary limit on new large-load grid connections, said Carson Kearl, lead data centre analyst for Enverus Intelligence Research.

Kearl cited NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s estimate from earlier this year that building a one-gigawatt data centre costs between US$60 billion and US$80 billion.

That implies the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO)’s 1.2 gigawatt temporary limit would still allow for up to C$130 billion of investment.

“It’s got the potential to be extremely impactful to the Alberta power sector and economy,” Kearl said.

Importantly, data centre operators can potentially get around the temporary limit by ‘bringing their own power’ rather than drawing electricity from the existing grid.

In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market – the only one in Canada – large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers.

According to the AESO, there are 30 proposed data centre projects across the province.

The total requested power load for these projects is more than 16 gigawatts, roughly four gigawatts more than Alberta’s demand record in January 2024 during a severe cold snap.

For comparison, Edmonton’s load is around 1.4 gigawatts, the AESO said.

“Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests,” CEO Aaron Engen said in a statement.

“Because connecting all large loads seeking access would impair grid reliability, we established a limit that preserves system integrity while enabling timely data centre development in Alberta.”

As data centre projects come to the province, so do jobs and other economic benefits.

“You have all of the construction staff associated; electricians, engineers, plumbers, and HVAC people for all the cooling tech that are continuously working on a multi-year time horizon. In the construction phase there’s a lot of spend, and that is just generally good for the ecosystem,” said Kearl.

Investment in local power infrastructure also has long-term job implications for maintenance and upgrades, he said.

“Alberta is a really exciting place when it comes to building data centers,” said Beacon AI CEO Josh Schertzer on a recent ARC Energy Ideas podcast.

“It has really great access to natural gas, it does have some excess grid capacity that can be used in the short term, it’s got a great workforce, and it’s very business-friendly.”

The unaltered reproduction of this content is free of charge with attribution to the Canadian Energy Centre.

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Alberta

Alberta Next: Taxation

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A new video from the Alberta Next panel looks at whether Alberta should stop relying on Ottawa to collect our provincial income taxes. Quebec already does it, and Alberta already collects corporate taxes directly. Doing the same for personal income taxes could mean better tax policy, thousands of new jobs, and less federal interference. But it would take time, cost money, and require building new systems from the ground up.

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