British Columbia Data Center Market

Overview

British Columbia is Canada's Pacific data center market. Vancouver anchors it with downtown carrier hotels and a cluster of colocation sites. The Interior and the north hold the larger, power-hungry builds. Clean hydroelectric power draws developers, but provincial limits on new load now shape every large project.

History

The market grew up around Harbour Centre at 555 West Hastings in downtown Vancouver. Peer 1, a hosting company founded in Vancouver, ran a data center in the building before Cogeco agreed to buy it in 2012. Cologix expanded its Harbour Centre space in 2011 and opened a second Vancouver site in 2014.

Kamloops became the province's second hub through a government contract. In 2009, the Province of British Columbia signed a 15-year data center services deal with HP's EDS unit. Q9 Networks built the Kamloops facility for it, and the site opened in April 2011. TELUS opened its Kamloops Internet Data Centre next door in January 2014.

Consolidation followed. eStruxture entered Vancouver in 2018 by buying Backbone Datavault. Equinix bought Bell's data centers in 2020, including the former Q9 site in Kamloops. Cologix added buildings from Zayo in 2021 and Cyxtera in 2023. Bitcoin miners arrived over the same years, at Christina Lake in 2018 and Canal Flats in 2019. The province paused new crypto connections in December 2022 and made the ban permanent in 2025.

The Market Today

Vancouver remains the interconnection hub. Cologix runs five facilities in the city and is building a sixth in East Vancouver. eStruxture is building a larger site in Burnaby. Hut 8 Canada and several smaller operators serve the retail market. TELUS plans two AI data centers in the city, one of them above a downtown steam plant.

Kamloops is now the center of the AI build-out. Bell runs an AI data center there for Groq and is building the Hillside AI Centre at Thompson Rivers University. TELUS is adding AI capacity at its Kamloops site. In nearby Merritt, Bell's AI data center hosts BUZZ HPC, and a second phase is due in 2027.

In the north, IREN runs campuses in Prince George and Mackenzie. IREN is converting them, along with Canal Flats, from bitcoin mining to AI cloud. DMG Blockchain is converting its Christina Lake site to AI hosting. Kelowna and Vancouver Island host smaller colocation and research sites, and Nanaimo has a large data center in development.

Advantages

• Clean power. BC Hydro's generation is overwhelmingly hydroelectric, which suits buyers with carbon targets.
• Cool climate. Mild coastal summers and cold Interior winters cut cooling costs.
• Sovereign demand. Canadian companies and governments want AI compute that stays in Canada. Bell and TELUS both sell their BC capacity on that basis.
• Dense interconnection. Harbour Centre and its neighbors put many carriers within a few downtown blocks.
• A defined path to power. The province publishes how much grid power data centers can get and how BC Hydro awards it.

Challenges

• Grid access. New data center load on BC Hydro's grid is capped. The first call for that power drew about twice the megawatts on offer.
• Size limits. Each request for service is capped at 145 MW, which rules out a single hyperscale campus on the grid.
• Land and zoning. Vancouver land is scarce and expensive, and urban rezonings move slowly.
• Seismic risk. Metro Vancouver lies in one of Canada's highest seismic-hazard zones, which raises design and retrofit costs.
• Local scrutiny. Communities now question data center water and power use. Nanaimo attached water limits to its data center permit.

Trends

• Telcos lead the AI build. Bell AI Fabric and TELUS's sovereign AI factories hold much of the new pipeline.
• Miners become AI hosts. Former bitcoin sites are refitting for GPUs and reusing power they already hold.
• First Nations partnerships. Several First Nations are negotiating leases or partnerships for proposed campuses.
• Heat reuse. The Hillside AI Centre will send its waste heat to the university's district energy system.
• Builds move inland. Large projects favor the Interior and the north, where land is cheaper than in Vancouver.

Power and Policy

BC Hydro, a Crown corporation, serves most of the province. FortisBC serves parts of the southern Interior, and the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC) regulates both. The Energy Statutes Amendment Act, 2025 ended first-come, first-served grid service for data centers. Since February 1, 2026, a regulation caps new data center load on BC Hydro's grid. The cap is 100 MW for conventional and 300 MW for AI facilities. The caps fall to 50 MW and 150 MW from February 2028 to February 2029. BC Hydro's first Call for Demand drew 15 applications seeking close to 800 MW. BC Hydro plans to name winners later in 2026, after the October 24 provincial election. The North Coast Transmission Line, due in phases from 2030, will extend 500 kV service west of Prince George.