Datacentres

The rapid expansion of AI compute and hyperscale datacentres is creating new infrastructure decisions for municipalities, communities, and institutions. Existing planning and governance frameworks were not designed for this scale, speed, or complexity.

Resources & Policy Analysis

  1. Datacentres, Concerns, Public Disclosures & Ontario Bill 40 [PDF]
  2. Risk-to-Policy Memo: City of Hamilton’s Interim Control By-law For Datacentre Development [PDF] [https://zenodo.org/records/21250126]
  3. Climate Fast‘s Say No to AI Datacentres.
  4. Dr. Anne Pasek’s Getting Into Fights With Datacentres Zine Framework.

Services

  1. Research Kit For Canadian Municipalities
    • Municipal Brief and Stakeholder memo
    • Minimum Requirements for a Municipal Data Centre Accountability By-law
    • Minimum Community Benefit Commitments as Pre-conditions
    • Municipal Utility Connection Audit (inc. Connection Approval Checklist)
  2. Datacentre Assessment and Planning Program
    • Structural Analyses for the Interim Control Bylaw (Ontario)
    • High-Risk Infrastructure Security Bylaw
    • Intersectional Analysis of Datacentres (inc upstream and downstream governance)
  3. Anticipatory Risk Assessment
    • These are risk modelling protocols for toxic thermal runaways, low-decibel acoustics, grid stability, water-balance and cybersecurity.
  4. Public Interest Screening: A Decision System for Councils & Staff.
    • This supports a municipality to decide whether a hyperscale data\centre proposal serves the public interest, or whether it should be paused, refused, or sent for further review.
  5. Policy & Regulatory Analysis
    • Focused analysis of emerging policy challenges, including:
      • By-law reviews
      • Municipal regulatory frameworks
      • Legislative impact analysis
      • Governance risk assessments
      • Stakeholder and decision-maker briefings

Pricing available for municipal, institutional, and community partners.

My Why

I’m advocating for accountability, legibility, and transparency. Not just between the BigTech, policies and public, but with the planet and our resources.

Each person who walks the face of this earth right now, has a role to play in what comes next.

The way Hamiltonians found out about the Steelport project was extremely sneaky. We witness it every now and then, but and we let it slide because we often miss the impact. But sneaking such large scale projects in communities have impacts across multiple generations — Hamilton has obviously seen this before, on the same (Stelco) lands. That’s not okay.

Message me here so we can explore how I can be useful to your community and organisation! We’ve got this!