The city council has given municipal staff three weeks to write a bylaw that would impose a moratorium on compute facilities. Proponent councillor Nrinder Nann said the measure would give Hamilton time to assess data-centre impacts and its own rules on energy, water, heat and noise. (CBC)

Talking point: Hamilton is one of the early Canadian sites of urban opposition to new data-centre development. Nann said other councils are showing interest in similar pauses. Earlier this month, a Hamilton council committee denied Slate Asset Management permission to split its lot so it could use one part for compute facilities, following local objections. The investment firm has said the data centres could be part of a bid by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, a federally-backed non-profit, to build a national supercomputer. Energy availability is still a major constraint for new data centres; elsewhere, Hydro Ottawa said it’s received applications from 34 big projects for 1.08 gigawatts from the grid, 86 per cent of the utility’s average annual load. Three-fifths of the new demand is from compute facilities.