The Government of British Columbia in Canada will limit the state’s data center energy usage and ban new cryptomining projects.

Announced on Monday, the government stated that it would introduce legislation and regulations to “address unprecedented demand for electricity and ensure that BC and Canadian economic interests are reflected in the allocation of British Columbia’s growing clean-electricity supply.”

AI data centers will be affected in two main ways. First, regulatory and policy changes will put “limits on the power available for data centers and AI.”

Second, a piece of legislation titled the Energy Statutes Amendment Act will enable the data center and AI industry to “grow in a manner that results in the greatest benefit to people in British Columbia and the economy.”

This will see BC Hydro, British Columbia’s main electricity distributor, launch a competitive call for projects in January 2026 for a two-year period, allocating “300MW for AI and 100MW for data centers.” Projects will be required to remain “within the total energy volumes allocated to these specific sectors.”

The cryptomining industry will be dealt a much heavier blow, with regulatory and policy changes looking to “permanently ban new BC Hydro connections to the electricity grid for cryptocurrency mining.”

These changes will be implemented in November.

This reflects the Government of British Columbia’s desire to use its abundant renewable energy to support its burgeoning natural resource industry as opposed to data centers. The announcement lays this out in explicit terms, stating that data centers and AI projects “generally provide fewer jobs and revenues than natural resource projects, while consuming large volumes of power.”

British Columbia now joins a host of other authorities and governments that have also sought to clamp down on data center energy demand.

This includes Ireland, whose main utility has imposed a de facto moratorium on data center applications in the greater Dublin area since January 2022, and Taiwan, whose government has stopped approving data centers larger than 5MW in the regions north of Taoyuan since August 2024.

A report from DC Byte states that Canada’s data center market is set to experience exponential growth in the coming years, owing to its abundant land and clean energy. British Columbia has seen moderate data center growth, with most of its facilities located around the province’s largest city, Vancouver.