One could imagine that the scarcity of electricity would end up costing private investments. We now know for certain.
Data center operator Vantage Canada must abandon its expansion in the province due to lack of power. The planned investments of 1.6 billion will be made elsewhere in Canada, the company confirmed Tuesday.
“We are no longer able to have the electricity we want to build our data centers. We had to decide the fate of our properties that we are unable to develop,” explains Maxime Guévin, vice-president and general manager of Vantage Data Centers Canada, in an interview with The Press.
Quebec has long looked down on data center operators at a time when Hydro-Québec was dealing with electricity surpluses. The province has three advantages: cold to cool servers, low electricity rates and clean energy. In 2022, there were 54 centers in Quebec. The growth of the industry today seems compromised.
In Baie-d’Urfé, Vantage has sold two side-by-side buildings in recent months that it has owned since 2021. These are 21 500, route Transcanadienne and 21 525, rue Clark-Graham. She gets 30.6 million for what she had paid at the time 26.2 million.
In February 2019, the American company acquired a million square foot plot of land on rue Marie-Victorin, in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, at more than $12 per square foot. “It doesn’t look very good at the moment. There is a very good chance that we will sell the site in the near future,” points out Mr. Guévin.
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Maxime Guévin, Senior Vice-President and General Manager of Vantage Canada
Note that the companies QScale and Cologix have previously announced a data center project in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville.
“We are disappointed not to deploy everything we wanted to deploy,” said Mr. Guévin. The Baie-d’Urfé site is a 400 million project with 75 to 100 direct and indirect jobs. For Saint-Bruno, it is a project worth 1.2 billion and 200 jobs. It was still 1.6 billion that we were preparing to invest over a period of 7 to 8 years. »
The $1.6 billion will be invested elsewhere in Canada. My role is to grow the Canadian division of Vantage. We have the money to invest and we want to continue to develop.
Maxime Guévin, Senior Vice-President and General Manager of Vantage Canada
“On the other hand, we understand the situation. We have good relations with Hydro-Québec. We act as good corporate citizens during times of electricity shortage. We respect the government’s choice to no longer be able to prioritize our industry,” adds Mr. Guévin.
Vantage has four operating campuses in Quebec, three in the Montreal region and one in Quebec City. “The good news for us is that for our four existing sites, we have the electricity required to bring them to fruition. »
Vantage, from Denver, Colorado, arrived in Quebec in January 2019 when it purchased the data center division of Videotron 4 Degrés. In four years, it has invested 1.7 billion in Quebec.