Meta Platforms Inc. META-Q plans to spend more than $13-billion to build a massive artificial intelligence data centre in Sturgeon County, Alberta, north of Edmonton, marking the technology company’s first such facility in Canada.

Meta described the data centre in a news release as a 1-gigawatt facility, referring to the amount of electricity it will consume. For comparison, the city of Edmonton draws about 1.4 gigawatts. The data centre campus will be built on 1,750 acres of land, according to a company spokesperson, well over the size of Stanley Park in Vancouver.

To meet the electricity needs of the data centre, Pembina Pipeline Corp., Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor Asset Management are constructing a $4.6-billion natural gas plant in Sturgeon County. Dubbed the Greenlight Electricity Centre, the project was first announced last year, with Pembina and its partners saying the plant would serve an unnamed data centre customer.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, did not publicly confirm its involvement until Wednesday.

The company the data centre will employ more than 3,000 workers at the peak of construction and more than 300 jobs once operational in two to three years. Meta is promising to cover the full electricity costs of the data centre, including for new and upgraded infrastructure. It will use an efficient cooling system to reduce water use, the company said, adding that water consumption will be limited to fire safety and equipment maintenance.