The world’s leading producer of semiconductor chips wants access to Canadian energy as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly advances.  

Specifically, Canadian liquefied natural gas (LNG).  

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produces at least 90 per cent of advanced chips in the global market, powering tech giants like Apple and Nvidia.  

Taiwanese companies together produce more than 60 per cent of chips used around the world. 

That takes a lot of electricity – so much that TSMC alone is on track to consume nearly one-quarter of Taiwan’s energy demand by 2030, according to S&P Global. 

“We are coming to the age of AI, and that is consuming more electricity demand than before,” said Harry Tseng, Taiwan’s representative in Canada, in a webcast hosted by Energy for a Secure Future. 

According to Taiwan’s Energy Administration, today coal (42 per cent), natural gas (40 per cent), renewables (9.5 per cent) and nuclear (6.3 per cent), primarily supply the country’s electricity.  

The government is working to phase out both nuclear energy and coal-fired power.  

“We are trying to diversify the sources of power supply. We are looking at Canada and hoping that your natural gas, LNG, can help us,” Tseng said. 

Canada is inches away from its first large-scale LNG exports, expected mainly to travel to Asia.  

The Coastal GasLink pipeline connecting LNG Canada is now officially in commercial service, and the terminal’s owners are ramping up natural gas production to record rates, according to RBN Energy. 

RBN analyst Martin King expects the first shipments to leave LNG Canada by early next year, setting up for commercial operations in mid-2025.  

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

Data centres – the industrial-scale technology complexes powering the world’s growing boom in artificial intelligence – require reliable, continuous energy. And a lot of it.

“Artificial Intelligence is the next big thing in energy, dominating discussions at all levels in companies, banks, investment funds and governments,” says Simon Flowers, chief analyst with energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that the power required globally by data centres could double in the next 18 months. It’s not surprising given a search query using AI consumes up to 10 times the energy as a regular search engine.

The IEA estimates more than 8,000 data centres now operate around the world, with about one-third located in the United States. About 300 centres operate in Canada.

It’s a growing opportunity in Alberta, where unlike anywhere else in the country, data centre operators can move more swiftly by “bringing their own power.”

In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market, large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers instead of relying solely on the power of the existing grid.

Between 2018 and 2023, data centres in Alberta generated approximately $1.3 billion in revenue, growing on average by about eight percent per year, lawyers with Calgary-based McMillan LLP wrote in July.

“Alberta has a long history of building complex, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects with success and AI data centres could be the next area of focus for this core competency,” McMillan’s Business Law Bulletin reported.

In recent years, companies such as Amazon and RBC have negotiated power purchase agreements for renewable energy to power local operations and data centres, while supporting the construction of some of the country’s largest renewable energy projects, McMillan noted.

While the majority of established data centres generally have clustered near telecommunications infrastructure, the next wave of projects is increasingly seeking sites with electricity infrastructure and availability of reliable power to keep their servers running.

The intermittent nature of wind and solar is challenging for growth in these projects, Rusty Braziel, executive chairman of Houston, Texas-based consultancy RBN Energy wrote in July

“These facilities need 24/7, super-reliable power, and there’s only one power generation fuel that has any hope of keeping up with the demand surge: natural gas,” Braziel said.

TC Energy chief operating officer Stan Chapman sees an opportunity for his company’s natural gas delivery in Canada and the United States.

“In Canada, there’s around 300 data centre operations today. We could see that load increasing by one to two gigawatts before the end of the decade,” Chapman said in a conference call with analysts on August 1.

“Never have I seen such strong prospects for North American natural gas demand growth,” CEO François Poirier added.

Alberta is Canada’s largest natural gas producer, and natural gas is the base of the province’s power grid, supplying about 60 percent of energy needs, followed by wind and solar at 27 percent.

“Given the heavy power requirements for AI data centres, developers will likely need to bring their own power to the table and some creative solutions will need to be considered in securing sufficient and reliable energy to fuel these projects,” McMillan’s law bulletin reported.

The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), which operates the province’s power grid, is working with at least six proposed data centre proposals, according to the latest public data.

“The companies that build and operate these centres have a long list of requirements, including reliable and affordable power, access to skilled labour and internet connectivity,” said Ryan Scholefield, the AESO’s manager of load forecasting and market analytics.

“The AESO is open for business and will work with any project that expresses an interest in coming to Alberta.”

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