Citizens rally against data centre project proposed in Sherbrooke
Sherbrooke Record · an hour ago
by Matthew Mccully · News
Electricity use accounts for $18M in municipal revenues
By Bryan Laprise
Local Journalism Initiative
The company Kent Industries, which currently operates three Bitcoin (cryptocurrency) mining facilities in Sherbrooke wants to transfer its current electricity appropriation towards a new data centre facility in the industrial park. The project has sparked discussion and controversy within the community, as a citizen-led petition against the project has garnered more than 6,500 signatures and 4,500 shares.
At the last Sherbrooke municipal council meeting on July 7, councillors voted on a resolution to start negotiations between its municipal team at Sherbrooke Innovante and Kent Industries for the sale of land in the industrial park to host the new facility. Sherbrooke Citoyen councillors Laure Letarte-Lavoie, Catherine Boileau, and Fernanda Luz opposed this motion due to a lack of information at the time of voting, but the members said that they “didn’t doubt” the economic benefits of the project.
The final vote on if the project can go through will take place in a few months once more studies, information, and public consultations will have taken place and been shared with elected officials. For the project to go through, Kent Industries must meet the conditions set by the council for the purchase offer.
The project
Kent Industries is a digital infrastructure and energy company which owns data centres and cryptocurrency mining facilities. Since 2018, the company has had an electricity agreement with Hydro-Sherbrooke for the use of 96 megawatts (MW), which it currently uses across its three facilities on Léger, Garlock, and Joseph-Louis-Mathieu Street. The 96 MW would be transferred towards the new data centre as part of a shift in Kent Industries’ area of operation.
“We decided, for a vision on the long-term, to modify our activities from crypto mining to a data centre with [high-performance computing artificial intelligence],” Bianca Lamothe Verreault, senior director of Kent Industries, shared with The Record.
The company has more than four months to meet the conditions on the land purchase offer, and would like to open the facility at the end of 2028 or in early 2029.
Like many citizens, the municipality was also concerned about the project, but was reassured after discussions with Hydro-Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke Innovante, and Kent Industries, according to Mayor Marie-Claude Bibeau. However, there is a list of conditions the company must meet, including public consultations to assess social acceptability and environmental impact studies which will be conducted by experts.
Lamothe Verreault affirmed that the new centre will be quieter than its current facilities. Additionally, as was done at their three other sites, Kent Industries will conduct a noise impact study including installing a noise monitoring system for a period of two years once the project is complete.
The only times that more noise would be produced is during very cold periods during the winter when the centre would switch from electricity to power generators. Bibeau said that this switch would be prompted upon request by Hydro-Sherbrooke to avoid having to pay higher electricity rates to Hydro-Québec during peak usage times.
“For that very short period of time, it will make more noise, and those generators are not as environmentally-friendly as hydroelectricity, but it’s only for short periods of time, a couple of times during the year. It’s manageable,” Bibeau told The Record.
Kent Industries accounts for a significant portion of revenues for Hydro-Sherbrooke, at $18 million per year. “This is why it is interesting for us to work with them and see how we can keep this business in Sherbrooke, because it would be a significant hole in terms of revenues for the municipality if we were to lose them,” she added. Bibeau explained that to make up for a loss of $18 million dollars by increasing the tax rate, an increase of seven per cent would be required.
While many data centres in the past have been known for high water use, the new facility in Sherbrooke will have drastically lower water requirements by using a closed circuit system, in which the same water will be re-used to the computers cool.
It is still too early to get an estimate of jobs created by this new facility, but the director told The Record that “the project will generate major investments in Sherbrooke with direct and indirect well-paid jobs.”
Citizens rally against project
An online petition hosted at change.org has gotten more than 6,500 signatures since it was created on July 19. The page explains that the primary concerns are related to high energy and water requirements and calls for “an exhaustive study on the environmental impact on surrounding wooded areas, electricity consumption, and pollution it will create” in addition to a public meeting to voice concerns to elected officials.
“We will be meeting with the residents to give us the opportunity to answer their questions,” said Lamothe Verreault. “We understand their concerns, but we are still at the very beginning of the process. There’s still a long way to go, but we are really excited to be able to do our project in Sherbrooke and we believe that this project is really positive for Sherbrooke.”
There are currently no plans for the city to conduct its own studies or public consultations, but this may change depending on the outcome of those presented by Kent Industries, Bibeau said during an interview. The senior director of the company told The Record that it plans to meet with citizens in mid-October.
“We had enough assurance around our first round of questions to give the mandate to negotiate the sale of the land with conditions,” Bibeau said. “I understand that people who haven’t had these explanations are worried, but we still have months in front of us to see the results of the studies, go to the public consultations, learn more, and at the end of the day, we want to make a decision that will be based on data, and that will be responsible economically, socially, and environmentally.”
The Record contacted the petition starter for an interview and did not hear back by press time.
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