StubHub sold ‘ghost tickets’ for World Cup months before real ones were issued

StubHub sold ‘ghost tickets’ for World Cup months before real ones were issued, CBC finds
Calls mount for bans on speculative tickets as StubHub cancels on thousands of fans


Dave Seglins, Aloysius Wong, Kathleen Coughlin · CBC News · Posted: Jul 03, 2026 1:00 AM PDT | Last Updated: July 6


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Estimated 9 minutes

A year before FIFA started selling assigned World Cup tickets, social media users were calling out ads claiming tickets were for sale. Here, a screengrab of what appears to be a StubHub Instagram ad was posted to Reddit by user Bruno Borges on Oct. 11, 2024. (CBC)

A CBC News investigation into resale website StubHub has found evidence the company advertised and allowed speculative listings for World Cup tickets months before FIFA actually released any seats.

The resale giant is facing a storm of controversy and calls for stricter regulation over what's known as "speculative ticketing" after the company stranded thousands of soccer fans, cancelling ticket orders just hours before game time when deals with sellers fell through.

"We're calling for governments to pay attention," said Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), the live industry association for the United States. He's written Congress calling for a ban on scalper speculation.


"You cannot sell a car that you don't own. You can't sell a house that you do not own.… If you take money for something and then don't deliver it, that's fraud."CBC Investigates

StubHub World Cup ticket cancellations prompt calls for investigations, legal action

StubHub, a global resale marketplace used by casual resellers and professional mass scalpers, has declined requests for an interview.

Spokesperson Jack Sterne in an email to CBC last week blamed the company's widespread cancellations on FIFA's ticketing technology.

"StubHub does not allow speculative tickets, period," he wrote.

But in a statement Thursday, the company said its sellers often post tickets they've been promised but don't yet have in-hand.

CBC's investigation found a lack of controls on StubHub's platform and evidence World Cup tickets were offered for resale long before FIFA first made assigned seats available on Sept. 10, 2025.
WATCH | Testing StubHub's ticket verification:




StubHub sold 'ghost' World Cup tickets, CBC investigation finds
July 3|
Duration2:18A CBC News investigation has found evidence that StubHub advertised and allowed speculative World Cup ticket listings months before FIFA officially released them, leaving some fans without a seat on game day.
'Ghost tickets' never delivered

Multiple social media posts show what appear to be StubHub advertisements for 2026 FIFA World Cup tickets as early as August 2024 — a year before FIFA's official release.

StubHub did not respond to CBC's questions about the ads.

Jeremy Wright of Austin, Texas, bought his pair Sept. 3, 2025, as a Christmas gift for his wife, a week before FIFA's official release.

"I clearly bought ghost tickets," Wright told CBC News after he was left stranded on game day.


They drove four hours to Houston only to be stiffed while waiting outside the stadium.
WATCH | He bought 'ghost tickets' for World Cup match:




‘I bought ghost tickets,’ says World Cup fan
July 3|
Duration0:47Austin, Texas, resident Jeremy Wright missed the World Cup and says he’s learned the hard way about shopping on StubHub before event tickets are actually released.

He attributes the ticket cancellations to speculative ticketing.

"Speculators … will start selling tickets that they don't have on platforms like StubHub and the expectation is that they can buy the tickets later and fill the order," Wright explained.

"The World Cup didn't work out that way for them. Ticket prices kept going up and lots of these sellers just never bought the tickets, never filled the orders."

Wright has since filed formal complaints with the Better Business Bureau, the Texas Attorney General, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.CBC Investigates

StubHub cancels thousands of World Cup tickets, leaving fans furious and heartbroken

Brad Michel of San Antonio, Texas, placed his order on StubHub on Jan. 5, 2025 — nine months before FIFA began issuing actual tickets.

He paid $15,654 US for what he thought were three prime, mid-field seats for a Netherlands versus Sweden match in Houston.

His tickets claimed to be Section 104, but lacked any seat or row numbers.

He planned to bring his son and fly in his father-in-law who is from Sweden.

"I feel like I got scammed," Michel told CBC News. "I'm like stupid for even thinking that I would be able to buy tickets that far in advance."


"I think they sold the tickets to someone else for a higher price point than what I originally paid. [That's] what I think. It's kind of a bait and switch."

Brad Michel, left, his son Aden and his father-in-law Ricardo Popa-Olave never received their StubHub order for three seats bought nine months before FIFA’s official ticket release. (Submitted by Brad Michel)

StubHub failed to deliver and offered "nosebleed" seats as replacements, he said.

Michel refused, watched the game on TV instead at the Airbnb they had rented, and is now fighting for a refund.

StubHub has not answered direct questions about whether World Cup tickets on its site were sold "on spec." The company said in its statement that resellers can buy special "guaranteed access" packages in advance of major events and are promised allotments of seats which they can post for sale so long as they have a "path to obtaining" real tickets in the end.
Verification lacking

Artist manager Randy Nichols, an advocate for ticket reforms, tested StubHub's platform last May and was able to list imaginary tickets for resale.

"There's only a trust system, there's zero verification," he told CBC News.

"I recently, before World Cup tickets were even on sale to the general public, was able to list and put tickets up for sale within seconds."
WATCH | 'Zero verification' tickets are real before posting, says advocate:




Posting tickets on StubHub too easy, industry advocate says
July 3|
Duration0:32Randy Nichols, an advocate for reforming the ticketing industry, was able to post World Cup tickets for sale on StubHub without any proof of having a real ticket.

CBC attempted to post its own imaginary World Cup tickets onto StubHub this week, but found the platform now explicitly requires a seller to upload a real FIFA ticket before allowing it to be posted for resale.

However, CBC was able to list two pretend tickets for resale on StubHub for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles — offering to resell them for $2 US each — with just a few simple clicks.

StubHub didn't ask for a real ticket, or require a row or seat number. The company simply asked for a credit card and for the seller to check a box attesting that "I agree to StubHub's Terms and Conditions. I confirm I own these tickets or have the right to be issued these tickets."


A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Olympics, which goes by LA28, told CBC in an email, "LA28 tickets listed for resale prior to 2027 are not verified by LA28."
Super Bowl tickets on spec

CBC News also found what appear to be speculative tickets for the 2027 Super Bowl in Los Angeles already posted for resale on StubHub as well as similar resale sites Vivid Seats and TicketsOnSale — when real, verified NFL tickets have yet to be issued by the box office.

StubHub has nearly 100 Super Bowl seats on offer. There are more than 200 posted on both Vivid Seats and Tickets On Sale — most without assigned seat or row numbers. One pair on StubHub for $10,526 US is listed simply as "Upper Endzone" — which doesn't actually exist as a section on the stadium seat map.

StubHub shows nearly 100 tickets on offer for the 2027 Super Bowl in Los Angeles, claiming just two per cent of tickets remain when none have been released yet by the box office. (CBC)

StubHub, in its statement, said sellers listing Super Bowl tickets may have received promises of future tickets through purchased allotments or season ticket holder agreements even if they don't have assigned seats.

"This is standard practice across the entire Super Bowl ticketing market — other marketplaces like Vivid Seats are also listing 2027 Super Bowl tickets now — and is not unique to StubHub."

Vivid Seats spokesperson Julia Young told CBC News that her company prohibits "undisclosed speculative ticketing" but allows sellers to offer seats they don't possess.

"Our Seat Saver program [is] a service where the seller has offered to procure tickets for the customer," she wrote in an email.

"You cart your selections; we'll handle the shopping," proclaims the company website.

SeatGeek, an official ticketing partner with the National Football League, has no advance seats for resale for the Super Bowl.

Resale sites VividSeats and Tickets On Sale both list more than 100 tickets available for Super Bowl 2027 before they are officially on sale for the public. (CBC)
Calls for ‘resale price cap' laws

The World Cup fiasco has prompted calls for government action and enforcement to combat speculative ticketing.


Stephen Parker of NIVA and the Fan Alliance wrote a joint letter June 18 to U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson urging lawmakers "to ban the sale of fake, or ‘ghost,' tickets and enact ticket price gouging protections for all resale tickets sold in the U.S."

"The way to fix this – is a resale price cap," Parker told CBC News in an interview. "You have to take away the incentive to defraud. You have to take away the incentive to price gouge."

He points to the World Cup held in Qatar four years ago where a resale price cap was imposed.

"If the United States had [a resale price cap], if Canada had that. I don't think we'd be seeing the issues that we're seeing right now."
WATCH | 'Their leverage needs to go away':




Ban scalping to prevent ticketing fiascos, watchdog says
July 3|
Duration0:58Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association in the U.S., says World Cup ticket cancellations are caused by professional scalpers, speculators who he wants to see banned.

Keldon Bester of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly project says authorities need to step up enforcement.

"The fix has to include stronger competition and consumer protection enforcement, clearer rules against deceptive conduct, and real accountability for platforms that profit from these transactions," Bester said in an email.

Jeremy Wright of Austin, Texas — for whom StubHub provided replacement tickets in the end — says there need to be laws to ban speculation.

"There clearly needs to be some legislation against selling these ghost tickets," he said, despite StubHub's attempts to make amends. "It's egregious that StubHub was selling tickets that didn't exist."CBC Investigates

B.C. launches probe into StubHub over World Cup resale ticket fiasco


Soccer fans file class-action lawsuit against StubHub over cancelled World Cup tickets

In Canada, British Columbia (which has launched a probe into the StubHub World Cup ticketing fiasco) and Ontario both have laws that explicitly ban speculative ticketing.

In the U.S. there is no federal ban. However, Nevada (2017), Maryland, Minnesota, Arizona (2024), and Oregon, Vermont, Illinois (2026) have all passed legislation outlawing the practice.


California is currently considering such a ban.

StubHub is on record as opposing California Bill AB 1349, and is helping to fund an advertising campaign to defeat the measure.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Dave Seglins

CBC Investigations

Dave Seglins is an investigative journalist whose recent work includes exposés on global ticket scalping, offshore tax avoidance and government surveillance. He covers a range of domestic and international issues, including rail safety, policing, government and corporate corruption.

His paintings sell for millions, but who was E.J. Hughes?

His paintings sell for millions, but who was E.J. Hughes? New doc tells the story of enigmatic B.C. painter
After the film's world premiere last fall, a Hughes landscape broke records at auction


Leah Collins · CBC Arts · Posted: Jan 30, 2026 7:44 AM PST | Last Updated: January 30


Listen to this article
Estimated 10 minutes

As seen in the feature documentary The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes, the artist appears in an archival photograph with his 1949 painting, Entrance to Howe Sound. (Optic Nerve Films)

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It’s like an image out of a strange dream, and yet Entrance to Howe Sound — a 1949 painting by E.J. Hughes — is unmistakably a picture of B.C.

The work depicts a turbulent coastal landscape, foregrounded by a titan forest which springs from a stony island. The trees’ brush-like boughs dominate the canvas, craning toward a smoky sky, and despite the shadowy atmosphere — marked by black craggy mountains and dark waters — the greenery glows with an almost radioactive sheen. It’s an eerily expressive scene, but off in the distance, there’s a sign of ordinary human life and industry: a steamship puffs along the water — the cheerful curve of its hull resembling a gleaming white grin.

For many years, Entrance to Howe Sound hung in a Vancouver Island home, but this November, the painting went on the block at the Heffel Fine Art Auction House in Toronto, selling to a private collector for $4.8 million.

First impressions from the floor at Canada’s biggest art fair

The price tag made history. The sum was more than double Hughes’s previous sales record, and Entrance to Howe Sound is now the fourth most expensive Canadian artwork to ever be sold at auction. Only paintings by Lawren Harris and Jean-Paul Riopelle have pulled more on the secondary market.

That detail may leave many Canadians curious to understand Hughes’s legacy — and the seven-figure interest in artwork. In a timely turn of events, a new feature documentary can offer some insight.
WATCH | The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes, official trailer:

The film is The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes. Directed by B.C. filmmaker Jenn Strom, it premiered at the Vancouver Film Festival last October, weeks before the record-breaking auction of Entrance to Howe Sound, and it begins a Canadian screening tour Feb. 7 with a run at the VIFF Centre in Vancouver. (The doc, which was commissioned by B.C.’s Knowledge Network, will be available to stream at www.knowledge.ca after April 16.)

It's a comprehensive biography of Hughes, whose 70-year career began on the cusp of the Great Depression. In the '30s, Hughes was student at the Vancouver School of Art, now known as Emily Carr University of Art + Design. There, he was taught by Frederick Varley, and some years later, the young artist would be championed by another founding member of the Group of Seven, Lawren Harris, who recommended him for the inaugural Emily Carr Scholarship.

The film also explores Hughes’s experience during the Second World War. From 1940-46, he served as an official Canadian war artist, and the doc visits the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa for a look at his closely observed scenes of military life.

E.J. Hughes, Canadian war artist, seen in an archival photo from 1945. (Malak Karsh/Optic Nerve Films)

When Hughes's army time ended, he and his wife moved to Vancouver Island, where he began painting the regional landscapes for which he’s best known. These picturesque scenes were wholly out of step with the times.

In the catalogue for Hughes’s 1967 solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, curator Doris Shadbolt describes Hughes as an “eccentric” and something of an anomaly among his contemporaries. “Essentially a loner and a non-intellectual, he belongs to no school and will never found one,” she wrote. “But on the other hand his private revelation is of a kind to resist the wearing of time. He has created a permanent poetry of Canada’s Pacific coast.”

Abstract Expressionism was the movement of the day, and yet, Hughes was able to establish himself as a working artist, even while maintaining a secluded life in the rural village of Shawnigan Lake. As captured in the doc, a fateful encounter made his long career possible.Landscape Art

Landscape art isn't just painting your surroundings — in a way, it's a kind of self-portrait

In 1951, Max Stern, owner of the Dominion Gallery in Montreal, was shown one of Hughes’s paintings while visiting Vancouver. Moved, Stern was determined to meet the artist, and after a long search, he turned up on Hughes’s doorstep to purchase every last artwork on the premises.

Before Stern said goodbye, he offered Hughes a contract. The arrangement allowed Hughes to support himself as a full-time artist, and over the decades, he produced hundreds of Canadian landscapes which were sold by the gallery. They are held by museum collections throughout the country, including the National Gallery of Canada, Winnipeg Art Gallery and Vancouver Art Gallery (which houses more Hughes than any institution).

The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes takes viewers inside the Vancouver Art Gallery's vault. In this behind-the-scenes photo, curator Ian Thom looks at Hughes artwork from the gallery's collection. (Kevin Eastwood/Optic Nerve Films)

When Strom was growing up on the West Coast, the Vancouver filmmaker was familiar with Hughes’s work. She has a theory he’s “like a family member that everyone kind of seems to know in the province.” Even if you haven’t heard his name, you probably recognize his landscapes.

Strom’s past credits include Assembly, a hand-painted animated short for the NFB, and A Golden Voice, a profile of Haida artist Bill Reid. The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes is her feature debut, and she began pursuing the project in 2019 after reading a book by Robert Amos. A long-time arts writer for the Victoria Times-Colonist newspaper, Amos has authored five Hughes biographies and he contributed a wealth of archival material to the film, including audio interviews recorded by the artist’s long-time assistant, Pat Salmon.

“What I was really drawn to looking at Robert Amos’s books was the depictions of towns and places in B.C.,” says Strom, and during the making of the doc, she travelled to as many communities as she could, hunting for the views Hughes captured in his artwork. Her camera takes us to Revelstoke and Chilliwack, Rivers Inlet and Comox Valley — among many other destinations.

Jenn Strom is the director of The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes. (Optic Nerve Films)

Equal attention is paid to the artwork itself, and the doc goes behind the scenes to view collections at institutions including the Vancouver Art Gallery and the B.C. Archives at the Royal B.C. Museum.

E.J. Hughes is renowned for meticulous detail, says Strom, and she was determined to capture “the draftsmanship and the brush strokes and tiny details” he’s famous for. “To do that, we had to go and find the actual paintings, and that scavenger hunt was a whole other thing.”

It’s possible to see Hughes artwork on public display; at the Audain Museum in Whistler, for example, a selection is always on view at the Barbeau-Owen Gallery. Still, the experience is rare, she explains. Hughes paintings “are often in collections, in vaults or they’re in private homes,” she says. But as luck would have it, several of those privately held works hit the market while the film was in production.
Although he passed away in 2007, the way his work is moving out into the world is alive and is unfolding as a story and it's continuing to change and grow.- Jenn Strom, director of The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes

With Heffel’s cooperation, Strom was given access to paintings before they went to auction. The record-setting sale of Entrance to Howe Sound left her “gobsmacked” in November, but the director is fascinated by the “enigmatic value” of Hughes’s work, and how it’s connecting with viewers today.

“Although he passed away in 2007, the way his work is moving out into the world is alive and is unfolding as a story and it's continuing to change and grow,” she says. “People are appreciating him more and more.”

David Heffel, president of Heffel Fine Art Auction House, saw the doc when it premiered at VIFF last fall, and he says it captures a true sense of who Hughes was as a character: introverted, charming, a consummate gentleman. (Heffel first met the artist in the late 1980s, and his company has championed Hughes’s work for several decades.)

B.C. painter E.J. Hughes dies

Early in the doc, Heffel appears in an archival clip from another landmark auction, the 2004 sale of Fishboats, Rivers Inlet. Like the Howe Sound piece, it’s a painting from Hughes’s post-war period, and in a voiceover from a news report, it’s described as “the most important masterpiece of his career.” The original buyer acquired it for $150. That day in 2004, the work sold for $920,000 — then the highest amount for a living Canadian artist.

Hughes, by then in his 90s, was still living on Vancouver Island, and he answered an unexpected call from the auction house while the sale was transpiring. It’s a moment Heffel will always remember. “We brought him into the ballroom of about 350-plus people to share his enthusiasm and surprise as a result of that sale. It was priceless," he says. “We will never have an opportunity to do something like that with an artist of that calibre again.”

In 2004, Hughes had already received the Order of Canada (2001), and a survey exhibition had appeared at the Vancouver Art Gallery the previous year. But the “golden era of the Canadian art market,” as Heffel describes it, was just beginning. “There hadn’t been very many paintings, probably fewer than a dozen, that had approached that million dollar price level in 2004,” he explains.

B.C. painter's works fetch nearly $2M at auction

When Fishboats, Rivers Inlet was auctioned again in 2018, it sold for $2,041,250 — the previous record for a Hughes painting. Over the years, Heffel says the fervour among Hughes’s collectors has remained constant. “The passion has always been there, but the price of Hughes’s works has changed as other things in life become more expensive and rare.”

Of the top 10 Hughes sales recorded on the auction house’s website, the majority have found homes with private collectors, and according to Heffel, all but one work resides in B.C. “Most [paintings] seem to be making their way back,” he says.

“Hughes is a hometown favourite, but I think he also has the capacity to inspire viewers from around the world,” says Heffel. Still, it’s Hughes’s affection for B.C. that may have lent him such broad appeal, says Strom.

“There’s a story about where we’ve come from that is embedded in his depictions,” says the filmmaker. “He was really just capturing what he was seeing with an open heart. And we can all maybe relate to that.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Leah Collins

Senior Writer

Meanwhile, Trump Steaks are back!

US and Canada fail to reach a deal to stave off 50% tariffs. As of last night, the Trump administration is imposing a 50% import tax on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, after talks to reach a trade deal before the 12:01am deadline for the tariffs to kick in collapsed at the last minute. 

Meanwhile, Trump Steaks are back! Trump to allow tariff-free beef imports to bring prices down. President Trump wants the burgers at your Labour Day cookout to be cheaper: He said on Truth Social that the US will “allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no out-of-quota tariff” over the next three months. He said the beef would be sold at 25% below current market prices.

A phone you can repair is finally landing in the US stores

 A phone you can repair is finally landing in the US stores.

The phone you can actually repair yourself is finally coming to the US. The Dutch company, known across Europe for building devices you can crack open and fix yourself, just launched the Fairphone 6+ stateside, and it arrives with credentials no major brand can match. iFixit handed it a perfect 10/10 repairability score. The warranty runs five years. Software support stretches to 2033. Compare that to what happens when you break a screen on an Apple, Samsung, or Google phone, where a single repair can cost $300 or more.

Twelve modular components sit inside the 6+, and every one of them is designed to be swapped at home. No technician, no appointment, no sealed enclosure. Ordering a replacement screen? That's $90. A fresh battery is $40. The USB-C port, which tends to be the first thing to fail on any phone, costs $20 to replace. The hardware itself is capable rather than flashy: a Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip paired with 12GB of RAM. Fairphone lists it at $650 on Fairphone.com, and it works on both T-Mobile and AT&T.

Indian students cool on 'American Dream' as EU opens its doors

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Indian students cool on 'American Dream' as EU opens its doors
By Praveen Paramasivam, Sai Ishwarbharath B and Charlotte Van CampenhoutJuly 19, 20267:40 PM PDTUpdated 8 hours ago

Item 1 of 5 A student reads a brochure next to a study abroad sign at the office of KC Overseas Education, an education consultancy, in Bengaluru, India, February 18, 2026. REUTERS/Priyanshu Singh
[1/5]A student reads a brochure next to a study abroad sign at the office of KC Overseas Education, an education consultancy, in Bengaluru, India, February 18, 2026. REUTERS/Priyanshu Singh Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary
Trade pact sets clearer post-study pathways for Indian students
EU tuition fees are about 50% to 80% less than the U.S.
EU gains appeal as U.S., Canada, UK tighten visa rules
CHENNAI/BENGALURU/AMSTERDAM, July 20 (Reuters) - A. Shrinikheathan is breaking from his family's tradition of studying in the United States, opting instead for a master's degree in Germany.
The 22-year-old Chennai engineering graduate is learning German and taking a language proficiency test as ​he applies for courses, drawn by the low cost of studying in Germany and its traditionally strong industry links.

Get the latest news from India and how it matters to the world with the Reuters India File newsletter. Sign up here.
His decision reflects young Indians' growing interest in European universities as the India-EU trade ‌deal's mobility provisions and tighter U.S. immigration rules prompt many to rethink the American Dream, a dozen students and education consultants said.
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"The world is becoming more multi-polar. Earlier, the U.S. was all that everyone was talking about," Shrinikheathan said, adding he was happy to have study choices beyond the "wildly more expensive" United States and Canada.
If sustained, the shift could reshape global student flows, with Europe emerging as a viable alternative to North America for Indian students as the EU seeks young talent to offset labour shortages from an ageing population.
European tuition fees ​are typically 50% to 80% less than the U.S., according to education consultant KC Overseas, with lower living costs also reducing the bill.
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"The European Union has become a leading destination for Indian students," an EU ​official said in a statement to Reuters. "Indian students bring entrepreneurial spirit, cultural richness, and research excellence."
He added: "(Indian students enrich) European campuses while deepening EU-India ties in innovation, ⁠trade, and diplomacy ... this trend will continue to grow, benefiting Europe's talent pool and India's globally competitive workforce."
India's overseas student outflow fell to about 626,000 in 2025 from more than 908,000 in 2023, government data showed, with students ​wary of tougher visa rules and rising costs in the U.S. and other popular study destinations such as Australia and the UK. Last week, Washington moved to tighten the duration of visas for foreign students as part of a wide-ranging immigration ​crackdown that began after Donald Trump took office in January 2025.

00:01South Korean student says stocks 'only salvation' after $200k loss



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WANTED: INDIAN TALENT AT SCALE
Indians' interest in Europe has risen since the January trade deal, which aims to make it easier for students and skilled workers to move to Europe through easier visa pathways, clearer post-study work routes and improved recognition of Indian qualifications.
"The EU-India mobility framework is part of a broader set of initiatives aiming to make the EU a global magnet for attracting and retaining talent, including for Indian students and talent," the EU official said.
"For ​the first time, a major economic bloc is saying, 'We want Indian talent at scale'," said Arnav Kumar, co-founder of study-abroad platform Leap.
India and the EU will work over five years on social security pacts with member states, initially setting up ​a tech-focused office to guide Indian students and professionals.
"Indian students have been growing in Europe without any overarching framework. Now, we have structured pathways from education to employment," Kumar said, forecasting a 60% to 70% jump in student and worker flows over ‌three to ⁠five years.
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Consultants say students are increasingly matching destinations to career goals and lifestyle, choosing Germany for engineering, the Netherlands for work-life balance, Portugal for affordable postgraduate research and France for management.
The prospect of greater mobility across the EU and a growing number of English-language postgraduate programmes are also attracting Indian students and professionals to Europe.

Education consultancy Europe Study Centre has seen enquiries jump 25% to 30% since the trade deal, with director Sivaraman Pandian calling Europe the "red-hot destination" for families put off by rising costs and tougher visa rules elsewhere.
More than 121,000 Indians study in the EU, about half the U.S. total, but the bloc has steadily grown in popularity, emerging as a leading destination alongside the U.S., ​Canada and Australia, government data showed.
CHALLENGES APLENTY TOO
Challenges remain, ​however.
"If somebody says you will get a job in ⁠this country, don't blindly believe it. Just because you studied in that country, it does not entitle you to get a job," said Pandian.
"You study, and you develop a skill-set; your doors are open."
Several students pointed to language barriers, housing shortages in major cities such as Amsterdam, intense competition for jobs, and the need for specialised skills.
Some ​others also acknowledged concerns about the rise in far-right political parties and hardening attitudes towards foreigners in parts of Europe, according to Reuters interviews and social media posts.
EARLY ​DATA SIGNALS EUROPE SHIFT
Still, Indian enrolment ⁠in the Netherlands climbed to about 3,700 in 2025/26 from 2,630 in 2018/19, making Indians the third-largest non-EU student group, Statistics Netherlands said.
Eindhoven University of Technology reported about 2,140 pre-enrolments from India for the coming academic year, up from roughly 1,390 a year earlier.
Leiden University's Indian intake in regular master's programmes, which are less demanding than its master's by research courses, jumped to 120 this year from 70 in 2021.
Italy's Padua University said partner agencies in India were reporting rising interest in ⁠Europe, including from ​regions that traditionally sent students to the United States.
However, whether the surge in interest translates into sustained enrolments will depend on how smoothly ​the agreement is implemented.
Chennai-based engineer T Suthir, who is exploring colleges in the Czech Republic and Italy, said perceptions were already shifting.
"Earlier, before the deal was finalised, my family was saying Europe is not good," he said. "Now, they are saying it's good."


Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Chennai, ​Sai Ishwarbharath B in Bengaluru and Charlotte Van Campenhout in Amsterdam; Additional reporting by Abhirami G in Bengaluru, Giselda Vagnoni in Rome, Bhanvi Satija in London and Saurabh Sharma in New Delhi; Editing by Dhanya Skariachan and Kate Mayberry

European stocks are finally hot again

 European stocks are finally hot again

Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

On Wednesdays, the Brew’s Sam Klebanov highlights a fascinating stock, commodity, or other asset that’s worth your attention.

Europe’s stock market is waking from its long slumber. For the first time since the Iran war began in February, investors bought European stock index ETFs more than they sold them last month, per Bloomberg data.

Despite fears of rising energy prices undermining the continent’s economy, Europe Inc. is blowing it out of the water:

• European companies are on track to report one of the strongest quarterly profit growth in years for Q2.
• It’s even outperforming the US in some parts of the market. EURO STOXX Bank index gained 20% this year, beating the 12% rise in its S&P 500 banking counterpart.

It’s also a hot hedge against the AI trade. BlackRock said $4.4 billion flowed into its European ETFs in July as cash was taken out of volatile chip stocks. And BNP Paribas said that while European companies might not be leading in developing AI, they could get a boost from using it.

But overall Europe still trails the US: Stoxx 600 is up 9% this year, slightly behind the 12% gain in the S&P 500

Lake Mead expected to drop nearly 33 feet by June 2028

Lake Mead expected to drop nearly 33 feet by June 2028, and that’s not even the worst-case scenario by Greg Haas - 07/18/26 10:47 AM ET

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – A critical year is ahead for the nation’s two largest reservoirs, with no relief after a record-low snowpack and a continuing drought.

A comment posted on the Colorado River Basin’s Facebook page Wednesday morning might have said it best: “Not enough water in the Monsoons to help. There’s only 2 things that can save Mead and Powell right now: 150 percent Colorado Rockies snow pack for 5 consecutive years, or God himself.”

Projections released earlier this week show Lake Mead dropping to the lowest levels seen since Hoover Dam was built in the 1930s, falling to 1,035.86 feet in November. That’s about 6.5 feet lower than Lake Mead’s level Friday at noon — 1,042.52 feet. Lake Mead is the nation’s largest reservoir, but it’s currently at 27 percent capacity.
The latest projections

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month study, which is updated monthly, published “most probable” lake levels through June 2028, when Lake Mead is expected to be at 1,009.69 feet. That represents a drop of nearly 33 feet over the next two years. When the lake is at “full pool,” the lake’s surface is at 1,229 feet.

Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir, is currently at 24 percent capacity. The federal government has consistently prioritized keeping Powell at levels that protect Glen Canyon Dam’s ability to produce hydroelectricity. To do so, the reservoir’s target level has been established as 3,525 feet. But Lake Powell is currently at 3,524.03 feet right now.

To keep Powell at its current level, the federal government has increased releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Utah-Wyoming border, bolstering flow in the Green River, the Colorado River’s largest tributary.

The government has also reduced releases from Lake Powell. Lower releases will have an impact on Lake Mead.

Water shortage levels that determine Colorado River allocations are based on Lake Mead’s level. And even under the most optimistic forecasts, that will mean less water for Arizona and Nevada in 2027. Those decisions are based on projections that come out in August, looking ahead at the lake’s projected level at the end of the year.
Water for the Las Vegas valley

Officials from the Southern Nevada Water Authority aren’t worried about the water supply to Las Vegas. Despite continuing growth in the valley, SNWA says Nevada is using far less than its allocation. That’s the result of water recycling and reduced use of water outdoors. SNWA receives credits for water that is recycled and returned to Lake Mead.

About 90 percent of the Las Vegas valley’s water comes from Lake Mead, with the remaining 10% from wells.

Total consumptive use of Colorado River water in Nevada is estimated to be 198,001 acre-feet in 2026 out of its 287,000-acre-foot allocation under current water shortage conditions. (An acre-foot is equal to 325,851 gallons — literally, the amount of water it takes to cover an acre in water a foot deep.)

The federal government is expected to establish new rules that will take effect in 2027 regarding river water allocations. Those rules might be released around the same time that Reclamation releases its next 24-month study in the middle of August. Current rules expire at the end of the year.
Worst-case scenario

Reclamation also released projections that show the best- and worst-case scenarios, shown in the graphic below. The red dashed line shows that under “Probable Minimum” projections, Lake Mead would drop below 1,000 feet by June 2028.

Some scientists say the “Probable Minimum” has been a more accurate reflection of actual reality during the drought that began in 2000.
Lake Powell’s place in the projections

Continued efforts to maintain Lake Powell’s elevation at 3,525 feet are not reflected in the projections released on Wednesday. Reclamation shows Lake Powell going far below that immediately in its projections with 10 consecutive months of declines that would put Powell at 3,491.75 feet.

If the federal government continues to prioritize Lake Powell, that’s water that won’t be sent downstream to Lake Mead, possibly amplifying the effects on Lake Mead.

The graphs in the slideshow below show levels at Lake Mead (the first slide) and Lake Powell compared to levels over the past five years.

The Colorado River supplies water to 40 million people, but scientists have said that climate change has reduced the amount of water in the basin by about 20%.

The result: More water is promised to users than the amount that actually exists.

The federal government — the Interior Department and the Bureau of Reclamation — are now shaping future agreements on how to manage the Colorado River after the seven states in the river basin failed to come to a consensus.

The water cooler is not for flirting anymore

 The water cooler is not for flirting anymore

Niv Bavarsky

On Tuesdays, the Brew’s Matty Merritt brings you the news you need to make life a little easier during your 9-5, 5-9, or OOO.

Looks like y’all are actually clocking in and locking in. People aren’t dating their coworkers like they used to:

• Just 16% of survey respondents said they went on a date with a coworker last year, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
• Back in 2008, 40% of those surveyed by The Harris Poll said they went out with a coworker.

Even cubicle yearning is down: Last year, 22% of people reported having an office crush compared to 49% in 2024, according to SHRM.

What changed? More sexual harassment trainings, blanket bans on intra-office romance, and the boom of (and burnout from) online dating all seem to have played a role.

Record-breaking investment in renewables could cement Canada as new clean energy superpower

Record-breaking investment in renewables could cement Canada as new clean energy superpower


Copyright Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press via AP, File
By Angela Symons with AFP
Published on 18/08/2026 - 16:02 GMT+2
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Record-breaking investment in renewables could cement Canada as new clean energy superpower

The slated green energy plans could light, heat and cool all the homes in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver combined.


Canadian officials have announced plans for "the largest clean energy investment in North American history."

A total of CAN$70 billion (€43.6 billion) is earmarked to massively enhance wind and hydropower generation in the eastern part of the country.

While plans remain tentative, they mark a major effort to increase electricity production in the country. The agreement was made between Prime Minister Mark Carney's government and the provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador

If the project moves forward, Carney says the 14,000 megawatts of power generated would be "enough to light, heat [and] cool the homes in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver combined", as well as supporting 23,000 jobs and contributing $31 billion (€19.3b) to Canada’s GDP through the early 2040s.

Related‘Excellent profit’: Meet the Bavarian hop farmer securing his harvest and income with solar 'hats'
Rhine drought, heatwaves and deaths: Is it time for Germany to enshrine climate protection in law?

It could also put a major dent in the country's planet-heating carbon emissions by reducing reliance on burning fossil fuels for energy.

Already, around 80 per cent of electricity generated in Canada comes from non-emitting sources – primarily hydro, alongside nuclear, wind and solar – contributing to the country having the lowest residential electricity costs in the G7.


Through a combination of clean economy tax credits, efficient project approvals, cooperation agreements with provinces and territories, and attractive financing, "We are making Canada the best place in the world to build and invest in clean energy," says Carney.
A boost for hydroelectric power in North America

The agreement includes plans to upgrade the Churchill Falls generating station while developing a new hydro project on Gull Island. Both sites are in Labrador, on Canada's Atlantic coast.

Some of the new power generated would also be transmitted to Quebec, with utility Hydro-Quebec selling a significant amount of electricity into the northeastern United States.

Importing more of Canada's hydroelectricity is seen by some as a key component to decarbonising the US electric grid, as well as improving energy reliability and cost for American consumers.

But the initiative could be stalled within months.

At the signing ceremony on Monday 17 August in Newfoundland, Quebec Premier Christine Frechette acknowledged that her political opponents, the separatist Parti Quebecois, could tear up the agreement if they win provincial elections in October, an outcome current polls suggest is likely.
Renewables investment could boost energy security and lower bills

Since taking office last year, Carney has been criticised by environmentally conscious groups who accuse him of betraying climate pledges backed by his predecessor Justin Trudeau.

A member of Carney's cabinet resigned last year over plans to advance a new oil pipeline running from Alberta to the Pacific coast.

Monday's announcement was however welcomed by the Canadian Climate Institute, which said it showed "the level of ambition needed to reach Canada's goal of doubling the electricity grid with clean energy".


The group's president, Rick Smith, said that enhancing domestic clean energy supply will also "improve energy security and affordability in a time of volatile energy price swings".

Democratic socialists are done being on the fringe. But are they Democrats?

Democratic socialists are done being on the fringe. But are they Democrats?

MS NOW · 4 hours ago
by Eugene Daniels · Elections


CHICAGO — In the halls of a Hyatt, serviced by unionized employees of course, hundreds of young, mostly college educated democratic socialists are milling about. It’s a bit too corporate for what is happening in the rooms: conversations on how they can expand, grow and fight back more.

The session names are the tell: “Winning Socialism in the South,” “Legislating as Socialists,” “Power Shift Opportunities.”

What you won’t find are the stars of the movement. No Mamdani. No AOC. No Bernie.

Instead, it’s the door knockers, the city council types, the local stewards who have gotten disillusioned with American politics and have taken their energy elsewhere. And in a lot of cases, that fight is aimed as much at the Democratic Party as at President Donald Trump.

Which raises the question that hung over the entire weekend, which nobody answered the same way twice: Are these people Democrats, or not?

Ask plainly and a half-dozen answers from people wearing the same label will give you the same answer.

“I think if the Democratic Party was actually delivering on the things that they say they care about and what is listed in their platform, I would feel comfortable saying yes to that,” said Hayley Banyai-Becker, a Democratic Socialists of America leader based in Portland, Oregon, who helped plan the summit told MS NOW. “The answer is no.”

Washington state Representative Shaun Scott, sitting next to her and running unopposed, wouldn’t take the yes-or-no. “I think that DSA is at the mainstream of American politics right now,” he said, then flipped it. “If we were to be considered part of the left wing of the Democratic Party, I would wonder what happened to the right or the center of the Democratic Party.”

Robert Levertis Bell, a public school teacher running for the Kentucky state house with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ endorsement, went further.

“I see many elements of the Democratic Party as absolutely being my enemy because I stand with the working class, and if you don’t represent the interests of the working class, if you’re not trying to build political power for the working class, and you actually are trying to build power for the capitalist class, then you are my enemy,” Bell said. “And the capitalist class runs the Democratic Party.”

Enemies or opponents? He split it. “Some of my enemies, some of my opponents, some of my friends.”

National co-chair Ashik Siddique explains the strategy rather than the sentiment. For him, the only way to gain electoral power is through the Democratic door. “All it takes to run in a Democratic primary is to be a registered Democrat, so that’s what we’re doing for the most part.”

Why not run outside it, like the Green Party: “There’s a clear ceiling to that strategy.”

Not exactly on the fringes anymore

The Democratic Socialists of America are in the midst of a year that has fundamentally begun to change their place in the country. The idea of it being a fringe is fading. By now the shock of the movement’s insurgent victories against tenured congressional incumbents in New York and Colorado has worn off and one of their own could soon win a competitive primary for governor in the presidential battleground of Wisconsin.

Asked why now, and they point you to 2016.

“Bernie Sanders’s campaign in 2016 showed how much space there really was in American politics for democratic socialist politics,” Siddique said. “I don’t think I was aware of what socialism really was, other than something in the history books, until he ran for president.”

Membership went from roughly 5,000 before 2015 to more than 120,000. Siddique rejects the lightning-strike version of that.

“Now is the moment where seeds that we started to plant a decade ago or even earlier are now bearing fruit,” he said. “In 2017, the year after Bernie had run for president, so many of us who had been motivated by his campaign just thought, okay, now what? It feels like we’re in the wilderness here with Trump as president, and we don’t know what to do.”

But those seeds can’t grow in bad soil. The conditions matter, and the conditions right now are a Democratic Party with approval ratings in the tank,, a base that keeps telling pollsters it wants someone willing to fight, and a summer of liberal self-loathing that has left an unusual amount of room to the left.

Insurgencies don’t happen when the establishment is delivering. There is no Zohran Mamdani, no Darializa Avila Chevalier, no runaway primary in Wisconsin, if Democratic leadership is fighting the way its own voters want it to.

Others in Chicago were blunter about the vacuum created by Democratic missteps.

“There is so much inconsistency with how the Democrats operate, and for a while I think they’ve been able to get away with ‘we’re not Trump’ but we’re in the second Trump presidency,” said Chanpreet Singh with the Seattle DSA. “…The absence of a positive political vision is going to continue to be a crisis for the Democratic Party, and, I think, an opportunity for us as an organization.”

Even with possibly ripe conditions, what the DSA is now grappling with in public is its own platform — abolish the Senate, abolish police and prisons, get rid of the Defense Department — and no DSA candidate is running on any of it, and everyone in Chicago says so freely. It is also opposition research that writes itself, and Republicans are enjoying it.

But the pamphlet being handed out in the halls of the convention center is missing some of the language that has created the caricature of the DSA and caused them to be pilloried after interviews. It shows they are still very far away from overtaking the Democratic party establishment.

“The language that we have in there is abolishing the police and prison system that protects capital over people,” Siddique said. Told it doesn’t roll off the tongue: “It doesn’t. You know, it’s not a great slogan. I’ll admit that.”

Asked whether murder and sexual assault would still be prosecuted: “To us, those are crimes. We want to limit that. I personally have no problem with having something called a prison be the place where people like that are kept.”

The great 2028 hope

A card circulating in one session urged members to line up behind a 2028 presidential run by a candidate who hasn’t said she’s running. Walking into one meeting, attendees were welcomed with that card featuring the face of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the heir apparent to what Bernie’s been able to build in American politics.

She’s not running for anything other than another term in her current job right now. But a push is afoot to align behind her quickly if she decides to go after the biggest job American politics has to offer.

“The 2028 Presidential Election is an unprecedented opportunity for the Left in the United States,” the card read before urging the DSA rank and file “to seize the moment, unite Labor and the Left, and elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as our Democratic Socialist President.”

The real version is less fun. A bloc of democratic socialists is set to arrive in Congress next year, and a movement built on refusing to compromise is about to be represented by people who will have to.

Siddique says the flexibility was always there. He points to the DSA bloc in the New York state legislature, “very agitational when it mattered” and still willing to work with anyone who’d move a bill. Data centers are his example, an issue where the anger crosses party lines and socialists in office “will work with whoever” to stop them.

Banyai-Becker explained how the organization plans to police its own once they’re sworn in. They “are still accountable to the working class, and we are able to talk to them.”

The test starts on Jan. 3, 2027.

The post Democratic socialists are done being on the fringe. But are they Democrats? appeared first on MS NOW.

Netflix invents cable TV

  

Report: Netflix invents cable TV

Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock

While some people turn into their parents as they get older, some streaming companies turn into cable television. Netflix is considering adding live channels and bundles to boost sagging engagement, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The report states that Netflix is concerned about a decline in engagement (i.e., how often a viewer stays with a show, movie, or series), which can signal subscription cancellations. Among the solutions being discussed, per the WSJ, is Netflix edging closer to the very thing it disrupted—traditional TV:

• Executives are reportedly weighing adding live channels that constantly stream shows and movies of a specific genre, because the one thing Netflix subscribers were missing was a random weekday airing of Couples Retreat at 2pm.
• Also on the table: Bundling with other subscription-based streaming platforms and selling those packages through the main app, similar to what rivals Amazon and Apple already do.

Live TV means more ad sales: Netflix generated ~$1.5 billion in ad revenue last year and projects to double that this year. A new channel showing Golden Girls on a 24/7 loop, for example, would certainly increase that number.

Isn’t Netflix the No. 1 streamer? By subscribers, yes, but shares are down 40% over the past 12 months. Some recent projections have come in below analyst expectations, and its TV viewership in April reached its lowest level since May 2025, according to Nielsen.

Netflix is also reportedly in the running to purchase Letterboxd, the app for people who love movies and miss writing book reports. Sony, Paramount, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian are also reportedly showing interest in the app, per Puck News.

Letterboxd has more than 30 million global members ready to be targeted with ads by whichever corporation lands the social media site. LionTree, an investment bank handling the sale, is “floating” a $250 million valuation.

Payday coming for Olympic athletes

 Payday coming for Olympic athletes

For the first time in history, every athlete at the Olympic Games will be eligible for a new USD 10,000 “Fit for the Future Olympian Grant”. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) grant has been set up to support the sporting career or the career transition of Olympians.

A fund of USD 140 million per Olympiad has been set aside, with the first athletes to benefit from this initiative to be the Olympians who competed February 6-22 at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.

This is one of the first actions taken as part of the “Fit for the Future” strategic framework to find new and complementary ways to provide support to athletes with their long-term sporting endeavors or career transition. With this new fund, the IOC is delivering immediately on its commitment.

The Fit for the Future Olympian Grant complements the existing support programs. About 14,000 Olympians per Olympiad are expected to be eligible for a grant of USD 10,000 for each edition of the Olympic Games in which they compete.

The grant will be delivered through existing National Olympic Committee (NOC) structures. If an Olympian chooses not to apply for this grant, their allocation will remain in the fund to benefit future Olympians.

The grant will not decrease or detract from already existing support provided by the IOC to the NOCs, International Sports Federations, Organizing Committees for the Olympic Games, or Olympic Solidarity. - Read on

Xbox starts major layoffs to save its lagging biz

  Xbox starts major layoffs to save its lagging biz

Morning Brew Inc, Photo: Getty Images

One of the biggest names in gaming could use an infinite money glitch right now. With revenue falling and a string of acquisitions not paying off, Microsoft-owned Xbox will slash about one-fifth of its staff and divest from some development studios, CEO Asha Sharma said yesterday. Sharma called it “the most significant restructure” in the company’s history. Xbox will… Lay off 1,600 people this week and another 1,250 over the next year. Sell or spin off four to five game studios that it acquired within the past decade, which will cut another 350+ people from Xbox’s staff (games that are already announced won’t be canceled, Sharma said). “Our business today is not healthy,” Sharma wrote in a memo, acknowledging the company’s measly 3% profit margin. Its quarterly revenue recently declined 5% year-over-year. The Game Pass gamble One big reason for Xbox’s slowdown appears to be its struggling subscription service, Game Pass. TL;DR: To build up an enticing Game Pass library, Xbox bought production giant Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in 2023 and ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Skyrim-maker Bethesda, for $8.1 billion in 2021. Those splurges didn’t pan out. (Xbox is keeping both companies, but the fifth studio it wants to divest is part of ZeniMax.): Game Pass currently has 30 million subscribers, a far cry from the 77 million that Xbox projected it would reach this year. In a normal year, the company lost 64 cents for every dollar it invested, Sharma wrote. But now…Sharma, who became CEO in February, said Xbox will return to growth in 2027. Since taking the helm, she has moved to reduce the number of games Microsoft publishes and reprioritize its most popular franchises, like Minecraft, Fallout, and Candy Crush. This streamlining comes as the AI boom sends memory chip prices soaring, pushing Xbox and its competitors to raise console prices. Zoom out: Xbox’s layoffs are part of 6,400 planned job cuts across Microsoft, whose massive AI spend is spooking investors. It’s the worst-performing megacap tech stock so far this year.

Giant Oil Tanker Runs Aground in Marine Nature Preserve

Giant Oil Tanker Runs Aground in Marine Nature Preserve, Spills Nonstop for Weeks
"A nightmare scenario is there's no adequate response to keep the worst ‌from happening."

By Joe Wilkins

Published Aug 13, 2026 2:53 PM EDT
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When an oil tanker runs aground in a contested war zone, does it make a sound?

Evidently not — at least not the kind of sound anyone could hear for over six weeks, the amount of time the Caroline Bezengi oil tanker has reportedly been spewing oil into waters off the southeastern coast of Oman.

According to Reuters, the vessel first ran into trouble on June 8, after an unspecified “blast” literally rocked the boat. It then ran aground near the Al Hallaniyat Islands on June 30, an Omani marine nature reserve and proposed United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) natural heritage site.

The Bezengi was reportedly on its way to India with some 800,000 barrels of Russian oil, though the vessel is currently flagged to Cameroon, per VesselFinder.com.

Speaking to Reuters, John Amos, an oil spills specialist and CEO of the environmental nonprofit SkyTruth, says the oil spill now spans over 2,000 square kilometers. The resulting mess has been exacerbated by a lack of clear oversight and emergency response, as it’s unclear who should ultimately bear responsibility.

“A nightmare scenario is there’s no adequate response to keep the worst ‌from happening,” Amos explained. If no country is willing to take action, he says the vessel would “continue to break up under the steady onslaught of wind and waves and… lose the entire cargo,” resulting in “a spill upwards of 40 to 50 million gallons.”

More on toxic leaks: Meta’s AI Data Center Caught Leaking Deadly Bacteria Into Water Town Uses for Irrigation



Joe Wilkins
Correspondent


I’m a tech and labor correspondent for Futurism, where my beat includes the role of emerging technologies in governance, surveillance, and labor.

Alberta County Declares Farm Disaster After Approving $13B Meta Data Centre

Alberta County Declares Farm Disaster After Approving $13B Meta Data Centre
August 11, 2026
Reading time: 8 minutes

Full Story: The Energy Mix

Jody MacPherson




Giacomo Maestri for ECMWF/flickr

The Alberta county council that granted permits for Meta’s new $13-billion, climate-polluting, gas-powered artificial intelligence (AI) data centre has declared an agricultural disaster due to record-setting extreme weather attributed largely to climate change.

The county’s council held a special meeting August 6 to discuss the unfolding farm disaster in the municipality of 20,000 on the northern outskirts of Edmonton. They voted unanimously to send a letter to the provincial and federal governments requesting financial help for agricultural producers.

Councillor Deanna Stang said the reach of the disaster is “bigger than people anticipate.”

“This affects not just the cereal crops,” she said. “Come the fall, trying to get hay is going to be a challenge, and they’re going to have to cull their herd.”

Councillor Richard Boissonneault agreed, adding “we’re going to have some real challenges moving into threshing season here. Those fields are so wet, it’s unbelievable and I feel for all these people.”

In a news release, the county said the excessive moisture, localized flooding, and prolonged wet weather have “substantially affected field access, delayed seeding and harvest activities, hindered crop development, and reduced overall agricultural productivity.”

Sturgeon County Mayor Alanna Hnatiw did not agree to an interview or provide written answers to The Energy Mix’s questions about Meta data centre emissions and the climate change impacts on local farmers.

Sturgeon joined nearby Thorhild, Westlock, Wetaskiwin, and Beaver counties, all of which had already declared agricultural disasters, representing more than 13,600 square kilometres of the province.

Rob Siewert, chair of the Agricultural Service Board’s provincial committee, told CBC News that disaster declarations on their own do not automatically create funding or compensation, “but it does set the stage and gets the federal and provincial governments talking.”

Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation Minister Tara Sawyer did not respond to questions from The Mix about the agricultural disaster or the impacts of emissions from data centres on the province’s farming industry.

According to documents filed [pdf] with the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC), Meta’s gas power plant would emit 5,677 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2e) per year, equivalent to burning almost 3,000 tonnes of coal.

A recent poll by Leger found that 79% of Canadian respondents are concerned about the environmental impacts of data centres, including their greenhouse gas emissions.

In its own Climate Adaptation Plan written in 2022, Sturgeon County identified lowland flooding due to heavy precipitation as a high risk for the municipality as a result of climate change. Damaging heavy rainfall incidents of more than 10 millimetres in one day were estimated to be twice as likely to occur in the future.

Edmonton recently saw a deluge of more than 30 millimetres in one hour, CBC reported. And it’s not over, with the drenched ground and warmer temperatures expected to continue the pattern over the rest of the summer.

More than 533 millimetres of total rain fell June 1 to July 31, breaking the previous record of 417 mm. set in 1953. Heavy downpours caused flooding, road closures, toppled trees, power outages, and event cancellations. A City of Edmonton official said damage from the storms could cost up to $30 million.

Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Dan Fulton told CBC there are a couple of factors driving the heavy rainfall.

“It’s a combination of climate change, which is the warmer atmosphere, and the jet stream breaking down a little bit and not moving the storms on as much as they normally do—which might be a climate change thing, too, but that varies from year to year,” he said.

Just as the July storms were beginning to hammer the area, residents learned for the first time that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, would locate its first Canadian AI data centre in Sturgeon County. In a timeline provided by the county, residents discovered that Meta’s permit approvals were given without public input. This was possible because the council changed its land use bylaw more than a year ago, adding data centres as a permitted use within designated industrial zones.

According to the county’s website, development permits are often not made public until after they are approved. As long as the planned project matches zoning requirements, the site says officials don’t have to consult with the public, and may be constrained by non-disclosure agreements as well as provincial privacy laws.

Meta’s Sturgeon AI data centre will be located in a designated industrial zone and consume one gigawatt (GW) of electricity, enough to power about a million homes. The company has an agreement for gas-generated power supplied by the yet-to-be-built Greenlight Electricity Centre, a $4.6-billion project funded by Pembina Pipeline Corporation, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, and Kineticor Asset Management. The power plant was approved [pdf] separately from the data centre by the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) in June.

Sturgeon County did not participate in the AUC hearing on Greenlight, according to the AUC decision letter. The AUC does not regulate [pdf] data centres, only the electricity required to run them.

Since Greenlight won’t be up and running until the second half of 2030, Meta has been allocated 970 megawatts (MW) from Alberta’s grid, almost enough to meet its full requirement for compute power. The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) is also preparing to open up an additional 1.6 GW of grid electricity to data centres on a temporary basis, raising concerns about price increases for ratepayers.

A second hyperscale AI data centre, the Beacon AI Heartland Data Centre Hub, is also close to being approved for Sturgeon County. It’s currently in the late stages of the AUC hearing process and will draw another 920 MW of electricity, also gas-powered.

The Beacon AI data centre and Greenlight were each exempted from an environmental impact assessment (EIA) by both the federal and provincial governments. According to the province’s website, environmental impact assessments are required “where the complexity and scale of a proposed project, technology, resource allocation, or siting considerations create uncertainty about the exact nature of environmental effects, or result in a potential for significant adverse environmental effects.”

Sabrina Perić, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Calgary and co-director of the Energy Stories Lab, wrote in her Substack newsletter that there is a pattern of “abbreviation of environmental review” in Alberta.

The government claimed on its newly-launched data centre web pages that EIA is reserved for projects involving “genuinely uncertain: new or complex technology, impacts that are hard to predict, or cumulative stress on a region.” But Perić said simply applying a “novelty test” is not what the law says.

“The statute could not be clearer that scale and cumulative burden are central,” she wrote. “The government’s website erased them and substituted a novelty test that appears nowhere in the Act.”

“It’s not just that big projects will face less environmental scrutiny, but that the people who live alongside these projects will have fewer and fewer official ways to object,” Petric added. “A novelty test that exempts almost everything is a novelty test that silences almost everyone.”

Alberta Innovation and Technology Minister Nate Glubish told reporters at the Meta announcement in early July the Meta project is indeed a first. He said Alberta’s data centre concierge team was “in talks with at least 60 different project proponents at this point in time.”

“There are several gigawatt-scale campus proposals that are in various stages of development,” he said. “This (Meta’s data centre) is the first of its kind, the first of this size, the first of this scale, but it won’t be the last.”

Another 39 large-load data centre projects are waiting in the wings with requests for a total of almost 20 GW of grid power, according to the AESO connection dashboard.

Glubish did not respond to The Mix’s questions about the agricultural disaster, recent court decisions about Meta’s child safety failures, or the impact of gas-powered data centre emissions. Meta did not respond to any questions from The Mix. Alberta’s Environment and Protected Areas Minister Grant Hunter did not respond to questions about environmental approvals or the environmental impact assessment of the Meta data centre. The data centre is not listed publicly on the AEPA website as currently undergoing an EIA.

Nathan Ip, Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP) shadow minister for technology and innovation, said in a statement that the NDP “shares Albertans’ concerns about the lack of environmental studies as well as what these data centres will do to our power and natural gas bills.”

Ip said his party caucus is holding a series of meetings “to hear directly from Albertans about where they stand on AI data centres,” and will “take the information gathered during this month’s listening tour to develop our AI data centre plan.”

The NDP did not answer The Mix’s detailed questions about the meetings or the agricultural disaster declaration, agreeing to an interview only after the public meetings were complete.

After the NDP launched its meetings, the provincial government announced its own series of town halls for Albertans “to ask questions and learn more about data centres.” The first takes place Aug. 19 in Ponoka and another will be held Aug. 20 in Sturgeon County, followed by a third Sept. 11 in Grande Prairie. Premier Danielle Smith will also join Glubish for a virtual town hall Aug. 27.
This story is part of The Energy Mix’s partnership with Small Change Fund.