Multi-GW data center projects have been proposed around the world – in cities such as Tokyo, Beijing, Sydney, Frankfurt, and Washington D.C. (Northern Virginia Data Center Alley) – which will lead to significant challenges for the existing grid infrastructure.

This has led to much debate among community stakeholders about the technical challenges, environmental effect, degradation of quality-of-life, and financial burden on local utility rate payers for fronting the costs of data centers.

In Alberta, a project commitment has been made with META to create 1 GW of data centers that will largely operate off of natural gas. Meanwhile in Ottawa, there is also a similar target with hundreds of MWs approaching 1 GW of data centers in a region which has negligible electricity generation. Especially during a municipal election year, a public discussion around this move has not been centered in the same way that it has been in other countries and in the province of Alberta.

As a cleantech company working at the intersection of renewable energy, electrified transport, and artificial intelligence, also headquartered in the capital region, BluWave-ai is in the perfect position to provide a needed platform for a robust public discourse around these proposed projects, their technology, commercial and environmental impacts, featuring industry leaders, climate activists, and mayoral candidates at this installment of the BluWave-ai Global Energy Transition Summit.

The event will be live at the RBC Foundry Room at Invest Ottawa on September 24, 2026 and available via livestream. There will be three panels half hour panels covering the following topics within the overarching discussion around data centers:

• Keynote address - Catherine McKenna , CEO Climate and Nature Solutions, former Minister of Environment, Government of Canada.
• Panel 1 - Technical challenges of grid interconnections, and utilization of renewable generation for data centers, featuring leaders in engineering technology, utilities, and data center operators.
• Panel 2 - Environmental and Climate challenges and opportunities to run data centers in a sustainable manner, feature leaders locally and nationally in climate action.
• Panel 3 - Ottawa Mayoral Candidate panel and positions on data centers, from a commercial and climate impact angle.