Cheap and Abundant Renewable Energy Boosts Quebec’s Data Center Cluster | ECONOMY

More and more energy-hungry tech companies and data centers are moving to the Canadian province of Quebec, which relies on cheap, renewable electricity primarily from hydroelectric dams.

The demand for cloud services has skyrocketed the number of data centers around the world; Only in Quebec currently operate 50, whereas two years ago there were only 39.

Many of these centers are owned by multinationals such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google and IBM.

Quebec’s capacity remains low compared to competitors such as Data Center Alley in Ashburn, Virginia, which is home to 70% of all global Internet traffic; while the Ile-de-France region which surrounds Paris has 120 data centers.

However, the Canadian province hopes to attract more businesses.

In recent years, “we have seen the arrival of new players, and very important players,” said Stéphane Paquet, General Manager of Montreal International, the organization in charge of the economic promotion of Canada’s third largest city.

Google It is increasing its presence in Quebec with the purchase of some sixty hectares where it will build its first local data center for 735 million Canadian dollars (600 million US dollars). Microsoft, with a view to expanding, bought land in Quebec.

Meanwhile, French cloud computing pioneer OVHcloud established one of its 32 data centers in Quebec in 2012.

Inside a former aluminum factory in the suburbs of Montreal, tens of thousands of servers are stacked row after row, linked by a tangle of cables. A deafening buzz along with non-stop flashing red and green lights create a sensory deluge.

“The objective was to establish itself on the American continent and Quebec was a natural gateway, while offering an inexhaustible source of renewable energy. This is perhaps not the only reason, but it played an important role in our decision ”, admitted Estelle Azemard, vice-president of OVHcloud for the Americas.

Its 10,000 square meter facility is located in Beauharnois, a few dozen kilometers from downtown Montreal, near a hydroelectric dam.

The company has developed a technology to cool its servers with water, which eliminates the need for more expensive air conditioning.

“The environment is really at the heart of our business model,” said Azemard.

Cheap electricity

A major financial argument for relocation, Quebec has low-cost electricity of around CA $ 0.05 (US $ 0.04) per kilowatt hour, significantly cheaper than in Europe or the United States.

“Our rates are among the most advantageous in the world,” said Cendrix Bouchard, spokesperson for the public company Hydro-Quebec, which manages the production, transmission and distribution of electricity in the province.

“Companies have come here because it’s cheap, but above all because the energy is (99%) renewable,” explains Paquet.

The long, cold winters in this francophone province also reduce the amount of power needed in data centers to cool computers, he said.

Power-hungry data centers need constant cooling to keep servers from overheating.

Faced with an explosion in data traffic, this sector emits nearly 4% of greenhouse gases in the world, more than civil air transport, according to a 2019 report by the French think tank The Shift Project.

In Quebec, the monthly power consumption of data centers is approximately 663 gigawatt hours (GWh), or the equivalent of the consumption of 40,000 households.

“It is better to place data centers in places with hydroelectric, solar or even nuclear electricity, than with electricity produced by coal-fired power stations,” explains Hugues Ferreboeuf of The Shift Project.

“But that’s not enough,” he warned. “At the same time, they must manage to control the growth of their consumption, otherwise they will capture too much electricity produced by renewable energies.”