I’ve touched on the topic of AI (artificial intelligence) and water consumption before, notably in my October 16, 2023 posting “The cost of building ChatGPT” where most of the focus is on the US. I now have some Canadian stories but first, there’s the United Nations University (UNU).
Global water bankruptcy
From a January 20, 2026 United Nations University press release (also on EurekAlert), Note 1: In the front pages, there’s this unexpected link to Canada : “UNU-INWEH [United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health] gratefully acknowledges its host, the Government of Canada, and ongoing financial support from Global Affairs Canada.” Note 2: Links have been removed,
Amid chronic groundwater depletion, water overallocation, land and soil degradation, deforestation, and pollution, all compounded by global heating, a UN report today declared the dawn of an era of global water bankruptcy, inviting world leaders to facilitate “honest, science-based adaptation to a new reality.”
“Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era,” argues that the familiar terms “water stressed” and “water crisis” fail to reflect today’s reality in many places: a post-crisis condition marked by irreversible losses of natural water capital and an inability to bounce back to historic baselines.
“This report tells an uncomfortable truth: many regions are living beyond their hydrological means, and many critical water systems are already bankrupt,” says lead author Kaveh Madani, Director of the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), known as ‘The UN’s Think Tank on Water.’
Expressed in financial terms, the report says many societies have not only overspent their annual renewable water “income” from rivers, soils, and snowpack, they have depleted long-term “savings” in aquifers, glaciers, wetlands, and other natural reservoirs.
This has resulted in a growing list of compacted aquifers, subsided land in deltas and coastal cities, vanished lakes and wetlands, and irreversibly lost biodiversity.
The UNU report is based on a peer-reviewed paper in the journal of Water Resources Management that formally defines water bankruptcy as
1) persistent over-withdrawal from surface and groundwater relative to renewable inflows and safe levels of depletion; and
2) the resulting irreversible or prohibitively costly loss of water-related natural capital.
By contrast:
- “Water stress” reflects high pressure that remains reversible
- “Water crisis” describes acute shocks that can be overcome
The report is issued prior to a high-level meeting in Dakar, Senegal (26–27 Jan.) to prepare the 2026 UN Water Conference, to be co-hosted by the United Arab Emirates and Senegal 2-4 Dec. in the UAE.
While not every basin and country is water-bankrupt, Madani says, “enough critical systems around the world have crossed these thresholds. These systems are interconnected through trade, migration, climate feedbacks, and geopolitical dependencies, so the global risk landscape is now fundamentally altered.”
Madani underlines the following four essential points:
- Water cannot be protected if we allow the hydrological cycle, the climate, and the underlying natural capital that produces water to be interrupted or damaged. The world has an important and still largely untapped strategic opportunity to act.
- Water is an issue that crosses traditional political boundaries. It belongs to north and south, and to left and right. For that reason, it can serve as a bridge to create trust and unity between and within nations. In the fragmented world we live in, water can become a powerful focus for cooperation and for aligning national security with international priorities.
- Investment in water is also investment in mitigating climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification. Water should not be treated only as a downstream sector affected by other environmental crises. On the contrary, targeted investment in water can address the immediate concerns of communities and nations while also advancing the objectives of the Rio Conventions (climate, biodiversity, desertification).
- A renewed global emphasis on water could help reaccelerate stalled negotiations and potentially reenergize halted international processes. A practical and cooperative focus on water offers a way to connect urgent local needs with long-term global goals.
Hotspots
In the Middle East and North Africa region, high water stress, climate vulnerability, low agricultural productivity, energy-intensive desalination, and sand and dust storms intersect with complex political economies;
In parts of South Asia, groundwater-dependent agriculture and urbanization have produced chronic declines in water tables and local subsidence; and
In the American Southwest, the Colorado River and its reservoirs have become symbols of over-promised water.
A world in the red
Drawing on global datasets and recent scientific evidence, the report presents a stark statistical overview of trends, the overwhelming majority caused by humans:
50%: Large lakes worldwide that have lost water since the early 1990s (with 25% of humanity directly dependent on those lakes)
50%: Global domestic water now derived from groundwater
40%+: Irrigation water drawn from aquifers being steadily drained
70%: Major aquifers showing long-term decline
410 million hectares: Area ofnatural wetlands – almost equal in size to the entire European Union – erased in the past five decades
30%+: Global glacier mass lost since 1970, with entire low- and mid-latitude mountain ranges expected to lose functional glaciers altogether within decades
Dozens: Major rivers that now fail to reach the sea for parts of the year
50+ years: How long many river basins and aquifers have been overdrawing their accounts
100 million hectares: Cropland damaged by salinization alone
And the human consequences:
75%: Humanity in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water-insecure
2 billion: People living on sinking ground.
25 cm: Annual drop being experienced by some cities
4 billion: People facing severe water scarcity at least one month every year
170 million hectares: Irrigated cropland under high or very high water stress – equivalent to the areas of France, Spain, Germany, and Italy combined
US$5.1 trillion: Annual value of lost wetland ecosystem services
3 billion: People living in areas where total water storage is declining or unstable, with 50%+ of global food produced in those same stressed regions.
1.8 billion: People living under drought conditions in 2022–2023
US$307 billion: Current annual global cost of drought
2.2 billion: People who lack safely managed drinking water, while 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation
Says Madani: “Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted, or disappearing water sources. Without rapid transitions toward water-smart agriculture, water bankruptcy will spread rapidly.”
A new diagnosis for a new era
A region can be flooded one year and still be water bankrupt, he adds, if long-term withdrawals exceed replenishment. In that sense, water bankruptcy is not about how wet or dry a place looks, but about balance, accounting, and sustainability.
Says Madani: As with global climate change or pandemics, a declaration of global water bankruptcy does not imply uniform impact everywhere, but that enough systems across regions and income levels have become insolvent and crossed irreversible thresholds to constitute a planetary-scale condition.
“Water bankruptcy is also global because its consequences travel,” Madani explains. “Agriculture accounts for the vast majority of freshwater use, and food systems are tightly interconnected through trade and prices. When water scarcity undermines farming in one region, the effects ripple through global markets, political stability, and food security elsewhere. This makes water bankruptcy not a series of isolated local crises, but a shared global risk that demands a new type of response: Bankruptcy management, not crisis management.”
A call to reset the global water agenda
The report warns that the current global water agenda – largely focused on drinking water, sanitation, and incremental efficiency improvements – is no longer fit for purpose in many places and calls for a new global water agenda that:
- Formally recognizes the state of water bankruptcy
- Recognizes water as both a constraint and an opportunity for meeting climate, biodiversity, and land commitments
- Elevates water issues in climate, biodiversity, and desertification negotiations, development finance, and peacebuilding processes.
- Embeds water-bankruptcy monitoring in global frameworks, using Earth observation, AI, and integrated modelling
- Uses water as a catalyst to accelerate cooperation between the UN Member States
In practical terms, managing water bankruptcy requires governments to focus on the following priorities:
- Prevent further irreversible damage such as wetland loss, destructive groundwater depletion, and uncontrolled pollution
- Rebalance rights, claims, and expectations to match degraded carrying capacity
- Support just transitions for communities whose livelihoods must change
- Transform water-intensive sectors, including agriculture and industry, through crop shifts, irrigation reforms, and more efficient urban systems
- Build institutions for continuous adaptation, with monitoring systems linked to threshold-based management
The report underlines that water bankruptcy is not merely a hydrological problem, but a justice issue with deep social and political implications requiring attention at the highest levels of government and multilateral cooperation. The burdens fall disproportionately on smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, low-income urban residents, women and youth while the benefits of overuse often accrued to more powerful actors.
“Water bankruptcy is becoming a driver of fragility, displacement, and conflict,” says UN Under-Secretary-General Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of UNU. “Managing it fairly – ensuring that vulnerable communities are protected and that unavoidable losses are shared equitably – is now central to maintaining peace, stability, and social cohesion.”
“Bankruptcy management requires honesty, courage, and political will,” Madani adds. “We cannot rebuild vanished glaciers or reinflate acutely compacted aquifers. But we can prevent further loss of our remaining natural capital, and redesign institutions to live within new hydrological limits.”
Upcoming milestones — the 2026 and 2028 UN Water Conferences, the end of the Water Action Decade in 2028, and the 2030 SDG deadline, for example — provide critical opportunities to implement this shift, he says.
“Despite its warnings, the report is not a statement of hopelessness,” adds Madani. “It is a call for honesty, realism, and transformation. Declaring bankruptcy is not about giving up — it is about starting fresh. By acknowledging the reality of water bankruptcy, we can finally make the hard choices that will protect people, economies, and ecosystems. The longer we delay, the deeper the deficit grows.”
Here’s a link to and a citation for the report,
Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era (or the PDF) by Kaveh Madani. Contributors: Mir Matin, Aria Farsi, Luying Wang, Amir AghaKouchak, Mohammed Azhar, Jenna Elshurafa, Sogol Jafarzadeh, Tafadzwanashe Mabhaudhi, Ali Mirchi, Abraham Nunbogu, Mojtaba Sadegh, Robert Sandford, Manoochehr Shirzaei, William Smyth, Hossein Tabari, MJ Tourian, Farshid Vahedifard. 2026, University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, DOI: 10.53328/INR26KAM001
AI data centre building spree in Canada (special emphasis: British Columbia [BC])
An October 18, 2025 article (with embedded videos) by Jonathan Montpetit and Yvette Brend with files from Tara Carman on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) news online website,
On a dry, hot day this summer, Kathryn Barnwell, a retired English professor, marched up the road from her home in Nanaimo, B.C [British Columbia]., to take another crack at the mayor.
Leonard Krog, a longtime friend of Barnwell’s, was standing by the entrance to a parched wooded lot, the proposed site for a data centre Krog has been backing.
“I really, really enjoin you to think about what this [data centre] could mean for your political career,” Barnwell said, barely looking him in the eye.
Krog, who has been mayor since 2018, sees the project as a chance to modernize the city’s economy.
“The kind of jobs that would be attracted to this kind of facility are the jobs of the future,” he said.
Until three years ago, Barnwell knew little about data centres, which house the computer servers that power much of the online world. But when the plot of land near her home was rezoned for one, she began researching. She’s now one of the loudest opponents of the project in Nanaimo.
Her main concern, shared by other local opponents, is the amount of municipal drinking water the 200,000-square foot data centre would need for its cooling system. In a region beset by drought, Barnwell says similar-sized facilities can churn through 70,000 litres of potable water a day.
“Life on this planet is sustained by water. It is not sustained by data. We don’t need data the way we need water,” Barnwell said. “And we in Canada have been pretty blithe about our natural resources.”
Barnwell sees herself as part of a global resistance movement drawing attention to the environmental impact of data centres, at a moment when the tech industry is spending dizzying sums to build them.
It’s not just BC according to the October 18, 2025 article, Note: A link has been removed,
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Canada is poised to join the data centre boom. The federal government, and some provinces, have been actively courting investors, vaunting the country’s cheap electricity (much of it hydro power) and cool climate.
At least eight projects are underway to build hyperscale data centres in Canada, according to the federal government. But as such projects face greater scrutiny around the world, Canada is jumping into the AI construction race with few mechanisms to protect its water supply.
“There’s barely any regulation in place,” said Geoff White, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, an Ottawa-based consumer protection group.
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Microsoft builds out in Canada
Among the big tech companies, Microsoft has taken the lead in building data centres with AI capacity in Canada. The Washington-based corporation purchased seven large tracts of land in 2021, including a golf course near Quebec City and a former department store in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke.
It’s in the process of turning the sites into data centres capable of powering its AI-enabled products like Azure and Copilot, an investment worth at least $1 billion.
At least two of the Microsoft data centres in Ontario have been cleared by municipal authorities to consume vast amounts of municipal drinking water.
The Etobicoke data centre, dubbed YTO 40, was approved to use up to 39.75 litres of water per second for cooling purposes, according to planning documents submitted to the city. That would be the equivalent of around 1.2 billion litres a year, or 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
A Microsoft data centre complex in nearby Vaughan, a city spokesperson said, is expected to consume 730 million litres of water annually.
But according to Microsoft, its new Canadian data centres will only use a fraction of that amount, because of design features that allow them to be cooled using outdoor air and recycled rainwater.
Alistair Speirs, general manager of Microsoft’s Azure global infrastructure, acknowledges traditional industrial cooling has “been a very water-intensive process.” He says the way Microsoft is building its data centres today is “with really that in mind.”
“One of the great things about building in Canada, and in colder climates, is that we can just use free air cooling from outside air temperatures.”
The company said its data centres will only draw municipal water when outside temperatures are above 29.4 C or when indoor humidity levels drop below five per cent.
Microsoft has made similar promises elsewhere. The company built a data centre in the northwestern Netherlands despite opposition from local farmers, promising it would only need between 12 and 20 million litres of water annually.
Dutch media later revealed the data centre was consuming more than four times that — as locals were being asked to limit their own water use.
In its response to Dutch media, Microsoft said the initial estimate had been based on “consumption at that time,” but did not specify what time period it was referring to.
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Growing concerns and protests but not so much in Canada, from the October 18, 2025 article, Note: A link has been removed,
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The new Microsoft data centres in Canada, which are slated to come online in the coming months, have faced no discernible opposition from the public. One Etobicoke city councillor wasn’t even aware of the YTO 40 project before CBC News contacted him.
That’s in stark contrast to communities in the United States, Europe and Latin America, where concerns about water scarcity have sparked protests.
Last month, Google shelved plans to build a $1-billion US data centre in Indianapolis, Ind., after residents organized a months-long campaign against the project. When a lawyer representing Google abruptly announced the decision at a city council meeting, the room erupted in applause that lasted for nearly a minute.
A growing number of jurisdictions in the U.S. and Europe are also seeking to pass regulations that would limit data centre water consumption or force companies to be more transparent about how much they’re using.
Canada’s federal government has set aside $700 million to fund data centre projects here. But aside from energy regulators, who review data centre applications to connect to power grids, there is little industry oversight.
“If we’re racing ahead and thinking only about the economic benefits, and not thinking about the downstream impacts to our environment, that’s negligent,” said White with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. “I think Canadians ought to be concerned. Our water is highly sought after, and will be as the world gets hotter.”
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Elsewhere in the October 18, 2025 article, there’s information about water use in data centres,
How much water do chatbots drink?
Data centres are as old as computers and until recently were relatively uncontroversial — boring bits of IT infrastructure tucked away in non-descript office spaces.
But with the advent of cloud computing in the mid-2000s, they dramatically increased in size.
These data centres — buildings ranging anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 square feet — required upwards of 100 megawatts of power and millions of litres of water annually for their cooling systems.
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These demands have only been turbocharged by artificial intelligence, which requires data centres that house thousands of densely packed high-performance chips, operating around the clock — and generating heat.
A study done in 2023 estimated that generating between 10 and 50 medium-sized responses in ChatGPT — the AI-powered chatbot — consumed about 500 millilitres of water. That accounts for both the water required to produce the electricity needed to run the data centre (435 millilitres) and cool it down (the remaining 65 millilitres).
A separate study, conducted by the International Energy Agency, estimated that in 2023, data centres around the world consumed around 140 billion litres of water just for cooling.
Much of that was potable water pulled from municipal utilities. (Because data centres generally use evaporative cooling systems, untreated water can damage the sensitive computer equipment inside.)
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If you have time, the October 18, 2025 article is worth reading in its entirety.
This October 15, 2025 article by Amanda Follett Hosgood for The Tyee is focused on BC’s approach to AI water consumption, Note: Links have been removed,
B.C. recently saw its first AI data centres open in Prince George and Kamloops, and more are on the way. AI centres have been touted as a way to grow the economy while ensuring data sovereignty by storing information within our borders.
“AI is everywhere. It’s changing how we work. It’s changing how we learn. It’s changing how we do business,” said Port Moody-Burquitlam MLA Rick Glumac, who this summer became B.C.’s minister of state for artificial intelligence and new technologies. The position comes with a mandate to expand B.C.’s AI sector.
“There’s a lot of good work ahead,” Glumac, who comes from a tech background [emphases mine], told The Tyee.
But there’s a hitch. AI is just one of various potential boom industries vying for a piece of B.C.’s limited electricity supply.
AI data centres are energy intensive, requiring immense amounts of electricity for power and cooling. B.C.’s hydroelectric grid, which is fed almost entirely by renewable sources, offers a clean — but limited — energy source that’s attractive to businesses seeking to market themselves as environmentally conscious.
As the province looks to green the existing economy, transition to electric vehicles and expand industries like LNG using cleaner energy, AI is fast becoming one more customer seeking a piece of the power pie.
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Glumac’s technical background? From the Rick Glumac Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
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Glumac worked much of his career in the field of computer graphics as a software developer, visual effects artist, and computer graphics supervisor.[8] He worked on the first computer-animated TV show ReBoot, and later worked for companies such as DreamWorks and Electronic Arts on well-known Hollywood films such as Shrek 2, Madagascar, and Over the Hedge.[8] Following this he developed apps for the iPhone.[7]
That’s a bit of leap for Mr. Glumac. Developing computer graphics is not the same thing as shepherding new and emerging technologies through government regulations and creating new regulations, deaing with public hopes/fears, anticipating energy needs, and dealing with any unintended consequences of the technologies themselves.
Follett Hosgood’s October 15, 2025 article provides an overview of the energy and data centre situation in BC,
B.C. is the first province in Canada to create a cabinet position dedicated to AI. But the province isn’t alone in signalling its interest in the industry.
The federal government created its own minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation following the spring election, tapping former broadcaster Evan Solomon for the position.
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B.C.’s parallel cabinet position “gives us the opportunity to really put a focus on this and to partner with the federal government,” Glumac told The Tyee.
In an email, B.C.’s Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions said the province groups data centres into three categories: conventional data centres, cryptocurrency mining and AI data centres.
It added that there are currently 12 “notable” conventional data centres in the province and three more requesting a power connection. If approved, the combined operations would draw nearly 40 megawatts of power — a small slice of the province’s 12,000-megawatt power supply.
AI data centres, however, can each draw more than 100 megawatts of power.
Two of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies recently announced plans to open AI data centres in B.C.
In May [2025], Bell Canada said it would open an AI “data centre supercluster” that is expected to use upwards of 500 megawatts, or about five per cent of the province’s current power supply.
Its first AI data centre, a seven-megawatt facility in Kamloops, opened in June. A second seven-megawatt facility is slated to open in Merritt by the end of next year.
The company is planning two additional 26-megawatt data centres in the near future, one in partnership with Thompson Rivers University and the other with the Upper Nicola Band. It says another two data centres with a combined capacity of more than 400 megawatts are in “advanced planning stages.”
Bell declined to provide detailed timelines, confirming in an email only that its Kamloops site is currently operational. “We remain on track and more sites will open in the coming months,” a spokesperson wrote.
The company also faces competition.
In April [2025], Telus announced two Canadian data centres, one in B.C., touting the operations as “fully owned, operated and secured on Canadian soil by a Canadian company” — a nod to national concerns over data sovereignty.
The Kamloops operation will be “powered by 99 per cent renewable energy,” Telus said, but how much power it will draw is unclear. The company didn’t respond to The Tyee’s questions about capacity or when it might come online.
Asked about how these data centres will fit into B.C.’s power grid, Glumac said that “BC Hydro is monitoring this very closely and planning accordingly.” The industry is evolving quickly, he added, and he wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the province would need to regulate expansion as it did with cryptocurrency mining.
“We want to make sure that clean energy supports not just data centres but supports the people in British Columbia and supports economic opportunities and job opportunities,” Glumac said. “It’s very important to monitor that and to balance all of that, and BC Hydro is doing that.”
BC Hydro directed The Tyee’s questions to B.C.’s Energy Ministry, which also provided an emailed statement.
“BC Hydro continues to look at how the growth in the industry could impact future demand, and will adjust its forecasts and planning accordingly,” a ministry spokesperson wrote, adding that the province is committed to “balancing energy demand with economic priorities.”
“We recognize that the AI industry is evolving rapidly, and we are closely monitoring how advancements in AI infrastructure may impact future energy needs.”
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AI data centres don’t have to be a problem
It’s not all doom and gloom, from Follett Hosgood’s October 15, 2025 article,
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Last year, the province [BC] imported a quarter of its electricity needs, most of it from the United States and Alberta, where it was generated using fossil fuels. In both 2024 and earlier this year, BC Hydro put out calls for power in an effort to make up the shortfall with clean, locally produced power.
Kate Harland is the research lead for clean growth at the Canadian Climate Institute. In an interview with The Tyee, she said that now is the time for governments to plan for the expected spike in energy demand from AI data centres.
“There is a lot of interest right now across Canada in having AI-enabled data centres,” Harland said. But she added that there’s likely to be a “tipping point” where AI’s benefits might not outweigh its demands on the power grid.
“If suddenly data centres are 20 per cent or 30 per cent of your total electricity demand, then you get into a new territory of questions,” she said.
While provinces such as B.C. and Quebec have traditionally taken a “first come, first served” approach to industrial power requests, some jurisdictions are implementing new rules to ensure limited power supply is allocated fairly and for the greatest overall benefit, Harland said.
Last year [2024], Quebec began requiring any projects requesting more than five megawatts of power to get ministerial approval. The approval considers factors such as economic impact, social impact and power requirements.
In 2023, Quebec’s government also signed an agreement with Microsoft as it launched four new data centres in the province. The tech giant agreed to reduce its energy consumption by 30 per cent during times of peak power use.
Harland said the pressure to meet power demand could be approached as an opportunity to build out renewables and increase supply. If data centres become more efficient over time, that would free up renewable power for domestic uses like electric vehicles and heat pumps, she said.
AI is also credited with identifying efficiencies, including in power use, which could help to offset its draw on the grid, Harland said. (Glumac also pointed to a recent study indicating that it could drive $200 billion in productivity improvements nationally.)
The technology’s practical uses tend to set it apart from cryptocurrency in the discussion about which industries get priority to grid access, Harland said.
The potential for data sovereignty is another argument in its favour.
But Harland emphasized that now is the time for governments to be proactive in forming AI policies.
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If you have the time, do read Follett Hosgood’s October 15, 2025 article in its entirety.
If you have even more time, I provided some detail about the federal government and its new Minister of AI Digital Innovation in an October 17, 2025 posting (scroll down to the Canada and its Minister of AI and Digital Innovation subhead for information about Evan Solomon, the new minister. If you continue further in the posting.
What about local governments?
Municipalities may also have a role to play as data centres become more important in their real estate markets as this January 31, 2026 article by Kenneth Chan for the Daily Hive could be said to hint at, Note: Links have been removed,
Westbank’s major downtown Vancouver office tower project at steam plant site pivots to hotel, residential, and data centre uses
One of downtown Vancouver’s largest office development projects, first planned during the pre-pandemic office market boom, will not proceed as originally approved [emphasis mine], given the prevailing weak office market conditions.
Instead, the office tower project previously approved for 150 West Georgia St. (formerly addressed as 720 Beatty St.) — situated at the southwest corner of Beatty Street and West Georgia Street, immediately adjacent to BC Place Stadium’s northeast corner — is now in the very early stages of being repositioned as a mixed-use hotel and residential tower with a data centre [emphases mine], based on an all-new architectural design concept that also adds density and height.
A number of preliminary conceptual artistic renderings also show this drastic pivot.
All of this will be integrated into the district utility company Creative Energy’s new on-site replacement and expanded steam plant facilities, which have incurred major cost increases and experienced delays, including factors related to local developer Westbank’s liquidity challenges.
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Pivot to a new tower with hotel, residential, and data centre uses on top of the Creative Energy facility
In October 2020, Vancouver City Council approved Westbank’s original rezoning application for redeveloping this site into an office tower and a standalone entertainment pavilion building, with below-grade parking and a new replacement steam plant.
Moving forward, essentially everything below grade — including the new vehicle parking and the Creative Energy facility — as well as the new entertainment pavilion building, will remain unchanged, while the office tower project above grade will not proceed.
Instead, the previous 264-ft.-tall, 17-storey, bulky, S-shaped office tower concept — designed by Bjarke Ingels Group and HCMA — with 583,000 sq. ft. of office space and 12,000 sq. ft. of additional ground-level retail/restaurant space has been completely scrapped and is now envisioned to become a 450-ft-tall, 48-storey, mixed-use hotel and residential tower with a data centre and ground-level retail/restaurant space, for a total of roughly 700,000 sq. ft. of building floor area.
The significantly increased height for added density is made possible by City Council’s July 2023-approved sweeping city-wide changes [emphasis mine] to the protected mountain view cones. Design revisions for taller heights are also set to occur for the nearby future Plaza of Nations and Concord Landing projects, made possible by these view cone changes.
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… a Westbank spokesperson previously confirmed to Daily Hive Urbanized that they are looking into adding major data centre uses [emphasis mine] to the 1977-built, six-storey office building at 111 East 5th Ave. This distinctive brick building — part of Westbank’s Main Alley tech campus of new and renovated office buildings in the vicinity of the intersection of Main Street and East 5th Avenue in Mount Pleasant — is perhaps best known for being one of Hootsuite’s office locations since 2014. Westbank noted that at this time, Hootsuite is still the building’s primary tenant.
How will these and future data centres affect Vancouverites’ energy needs and access to water?.Hopefully, someone in Vancouver’s city government is doing some thinking on these matters.
