A little-known US-based developer tied to a failed bitcoin business and a fraudulent-transfer lawsuit is quietly advancing Alberta’s latest gas-fired AI data centre proposal.

The 466MW Black Bear Power Project (BBPP) close to Swan Hills northwest of Edmonton has received little media coverage. This is surprising given it has changed proponents, quietly abandoned previous carbon capture and storage commitments, and would potentially add one million tonnes of annual emissions into our already fire-choked atmosphere for decades into the future.

The backstory of BBPP raises troubling questions about Alberta and AI oversight.

How could a billion-dollar gas-generation project rise from the regulatory grave under a completely different company while abandoning previous climate commitments? What does this reveal about the climate costs of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s memorandum of understanding with Alberta, which paved the way for the current AI data centre gold rush by hollowing out federal clean energy regulations? 

When BBPP was approved by the Impact Agency of Canada in 2024, the proponent was Calgary-based Kiwetinohk Energy and the proposal included a commitment that the 460-megawatt gas plant would capture its carbon dioxide and pipe it to an underground storage hub.

Kiwetinohk assured federal regulators in 2024, “to ensure compliance with the proposed federal Clean Electricity Regulations, which will strictly limit greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas-fired power generation facilities starting in 2035, Kiwetinohk has designed the BBPP to accommodate carbon capture equipment and facilities.”

However, Kiwetinohk exited the power business in 2025 after being bought by another company and cancelled a proposed grid connection between the BBPP site and the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) in December of that year.

An Unproven Developer

Sometime in the spring of 2026, a U.S.-based developer called Teton Digital LLC apparently reanimated the project with some significant differences. Teton states that its own application to AESO for BBPP to be connected to grid was “filed April 2026”, however its Black Bear web page makes no mention of carbon capture. Teton also tells prospective investors that the project is “fully permitted at the federal level” and Alberta TIER carbon cost ‘is fixed through 2040 under the May 2026 Canada–Alberta agreement.” 

Industrial carbon prices were previously scheduled to increase to $130 per tonne in 2030, a timeline now pushed back a decade by Carney. While investors may benefit from Ottawa caving on carbon price increases until 2040, the emissions are very real. An unabated combined-cycle plant of this size, running around the clock to feed a data centre, would produce about one million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, every year, for decades.

Albertans might at least expect that a replacement proponent for a project this size would be a substantial, proven company. This is far from clear. Teton Digital appears to be controlled by a Washington-state family that previously ran a bitcoin-mining business called Scate Ventures, which collapsed and left a roughly US$1.1-million court judgment unpaid.

Teton was a defendant in a fraudulent-transfer lawsuit in 2024 brought by Anchorage Lending that found “Anchorage has established constructive fraud with respect to…purchases that took place on or after July 1, 2022”. The current CEO of Teton, Scott Bennett apparently testified during that dispute that Teton had no employees and “did not get off the ground at all.” Two years later this same company seems to be marketing a $1.3-billion Alberta power project. What could go wrong?

Meanwhile the local municipality of Big Lakes County is amending  bylaws to allow fast tracking of the project over the objections of local Indigenous communities. “There are a lot of questions about the environment and water”, said Jeff Chalifoux on behalf of the Sucker Creek First Nation at a local council meeting on May 13th. “We ask council to not proceed with the bylaw until questions have been answered.”

The High Costs of Data Centres

DeSmog has previously reported on how massively scaling up data centres will further increase costs for beleaguered Alberta ratepayers, who pay the highest electricity rates in the country. The already-strained Alberta grid will be further impacted since the Alberta Electric System Operator recently announced rules allowing proposed AI data centres to access an additional 1.6 gigawatts of capacity for a period of three years until developers can build their own gas-fired energy supply. These rules specifically exclude renewable power generation and are “limited to gas-fired thermal generation only.”

Alberta is chasing $100 billion in data-centre investment and has invited developers to “bring their own power” – as long as that power involves burning natural gas. Nearly 100 data centres are in the works across Canada, and roughly nine in ten are proposed for Alberta, whose grid is already about five times more carbon-intensive than the national average. 

The consequences of Carney’s surrender around clean energy regulations are only beginning to be revealed. Smith seems to be fully exploiting this regulatory capitulation and the feeding frenzy around new data centres to drive up local gas demand. Commenting on a massive gas-fired Meta data centre north of Edmonton the Premier told The Hub, “These kinds of projects just wouldn’t have been possible if we had followed along the same path that the the liberals, supported by their anti-development NDP counterparts in Ottawa.” 

This pro-gas-demand sentiment is echoed by her Technology Minister Nate Glubish who told Oil and Gas 360, “We’re essentially looking at these data centers as digital pipelines and digital refineries for us to help get the value from our natural gas to global markets, but in a creative modern way”.  

While a massive build-out of gas-fired data centres may benefit Smith’s friends in the fossil fuel industry, ordinary Albertans will be saddled with higher energy costs, and all of us will all endure the accelerating climate consequences.  

If the premier’s open-door AI fiesta also attracts some American guests, who will be stuck with the clean up when the party is over?