A push for a moratorium on artificial intelligence data centres, led by “ambushed” communities and a politically diverse alliance including senior Greens and conservative farmers, is gaining momentum from cities to the bush. New figures show an almost trebling of AI data centre energy needs from 1.4GW to 3.9GW in the next four years, while their water needs will rise from 5.5GL to 17GL. Former Greens leader and Global Greens ambassador Christine Milne said the rapid spread of energy-hungry AI data centres was damaging the environment, water resources and communities with “no returns” for locals. The pioneering climate activist said the spread of AI data centres was also undermining the emissions reduction benefits of the national renewable’s rollout, including the federally bankrolled Snowy 2.0 and Marinus Link projects. She backed calls for Australia to follow Singapore and parts of the US in imposing a moratorium on new data centres until more comprehensive planning and regulatory regimes were in place.
“The federal government need to look at it as a national issue because we have got limited water and energy capacity,” Ms Milne said. “These are big-picture issues and there’s a lot of federal money being allocated for the transition to renewables, including vast amounts into Snowy 2.0, for Marinus and for extended transmission networks. “I don’t think people are very excited about rolling out renewables to feed data centres. The whole idea was to bring down emissions.” Ms Milne says the AI data centre revolution is ‘full-on exploitation’ of ‘environment, water and communities. She believed three data centres proposed by Firmus Technologies for northern Tasmania would “industrialise” much of the region with new wind farms and transmission lines, while severely limiting the state’s energy options. “It’s hydro-industrialisation mark II with the difference being that the first time round at least there were jobs,” she said. “Second time around it’s just full-on exploitation of Tasmania’s environment, water, and communities – and no returns to the community.
“Why are they prioritising these data centres and not asking the community how they want to use any energy capacity that’s there? It’s a direct subsidy that the Tasmanian community are paying to foreign companies.” Singapore-based Firmus confirmed its three northern Tasmanian data centres would use a combined 418MW of power; about a third of the state’s average winter energy use. The company is seeking supply contracts with Hydro Tasmania, which would require the state-owned generator to bring online more wind capacity via deals with private wind developers. However, Hydro will still need to use its existing hydro storage to “firm” that energy, ensuring it can be delivered when the wind is not blowing. Marc White, principal consultant at Hobart-based Goanna Energy Consulting, says Firmus’s energy demands will have an impact on Hydro Tasmania’s firming capacity – and returns to taxpayers from the Marinus Link.
Energy analyst Marc White, of Goanna Energy, said Hydro would need 1200MW of new wind generation to supply 400MW to Firmus. “That’s because the data centres traditionally run at their rate of capacity 90 per cent of the time, whereas a wind farm in Tasmania is likely to only run 35-40 per cent of the time,” Mr White said. Having to provide more firming power would limit Hydro’s ability to make profits by exporting power to the mainland via the taxpayer-funded new, $5bn Marinus Link undersea cable project. That impacts the viability of the contentious project, which requires vast new transmission lines across northwestern Tasmania, and potentially reduces profits for return to taxpayers or investment in hydro infrastructure. Some locals at the three northern Tasmanian Firmus sites – St Leonard’s in Launceston, Long Reach and Wesley Vale – said they felt “ambushed” by the projects. The 104MW St Leonards data centre was approved by the local council and under construction before some locals were even aware of it.
“I’m worried for my community,” local nurse Kayla Thompson said. “These projects feel rushed and it feels like there hasn’t been any time for people to react and provide feedback. “It makes these projects feel sneaky. Where was the consultation with the communities? Everyone is afraid now and they don’t feel safe.” As well as localised issues of noise from the centres’ cooling fans, water use and management of wastewater, there were broader concerns. “Where is the power coming from?” Ms Thompson said. “Is this going to trip our grid? Will it be fully renewable power? What is the impact on our state resources?” Many locals supported a moratorium. “Surely we could just press pause on this until we have a plan,” she said. In NSW, where Transgrid has reportedly contracted 1.5GW to data centres in western Sydney alone, councils have led calls for a moratorium.
In Tasmania, Greens MP Tabatha Badger is circulating a petition – which attracted 5000 signatures in a week – backing a moratorium and will consider legislating one in the House of Assembly, where opposition parties and independents have the numbers over the minority Liberal government. “Until we can have guardrails put in place, a moratorium is the way to go,” Ms Badger said. “We are so far off having any kind of community license for AI factories, we need to stop and look at what the benefits are to Tasmania or whether we only do these at a smaller island-appropriate scale.” State Labor stopped short of backing a formal moratorium but is calling for a freeze on new energy deals with data centres until the state develops a “statement of expectations” to guide their spread. “Tasmania’s renewable energy belongs to Tasmanians,” Labor energy spokeswoman Janie Finlay said. “Before any major project gets access to it, Tasmanians deserve to know what jobs, island investment and long-term benefits our state is getting in return, and how our premium Tasmanian energy resources and power bills will be affected.”
Moratoriums at state or federal level are also backed by some traditionally conservative farming groups, including the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF), concerned about water supplies and loss of farmland to more renewables and transmission lines. “We would support a moratorium. We want to make sure decisions are made with all the information because at the moment we are not looking at the cumulative impacts,” VFF president Ryan Milgate said. “We need data centres. It’s the reality of the world in which we live. But we have to make sure we’ve got appropriate planning and understanding the impacts before building them ad hoc. “The scale is extraordinary. It’s like a gold rush at the moment – first in, best dressed, build it and worry about the rest later.” There is particular concern in the dairy sector, where competition for water is already tight amid buybacks for environmental flows.
“We feel it’s another pressure on the irrigation system – they are taking water out of the consumptive pool that we are growing food with,” Murrabit dairy farmer and VFF Water Council chair Andrew Leahy said. “It’s less water for farmers and the environment.” The needs of some large data centres for significant volumes of water for cooling systems could force up the already elevated price of irrigation water, he said. Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who has released federal “expectations” on data centre developers, sidestepped calls for a moratorium but appeared open to regulatory reform in consultation with the states. “Data centres are one of the biggest drivers of new energy demand – we’re acting to make them an asset to the energy grid, not a strain,” Mr Bowen said. “If data centres want to benefit from Australia’s energy grid, we think they should do their bit to strengthen it – and it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of states agree.”
In May, state and federal energy ministers – with the exception of Queensland – agreed data centres should “fully offset their electricity demand” with new renewables. They have sought advice from the Australian Energy Market Commission on “regulatory design options”, flagging potential changes to national electricity regulation, to be considered by ministers later in July. In the meantime, the estimated $155bn data centre juggernaut marches on, in some cases relying on local approvals that critics say do not adequately address regional and national issues. Data Centres Australia is strongly resisting calls for moratoriums. Chief executive Belinda Dennett dismissed them as “blunt tools” that could set back Australia’s hopes of becoming a global AI leader. “They would freeze the whole industry, to legislate safeguards that for the most part already exist, whilst sending the investment, the jobs and the local infrastructure these projects bring to other countries,” Ms Dennett said.
“Australia has the opportunity to create a new export industry … We also capture more of the supply chain – the broader ecosystem that supports the build and operation of data centres – from precast concrete manufacturers to cable suppliers and steel fabricators. “By having the infrastructure here in Australia, we can have a say in how AI is developed – with Australian laws, language and culture. Or we can be an importer of someone else’s tools; a client-state of a foreign nation.” Ms Dennett said the industry was catalysing the rollout of renewables, and concerns about water use were overblown. The increased water demands to 2030 were manageable and still a tiny fraction of that used by manufacturing, she said. She said mid-size data centres generated about one full-time worker per megawatt of power used, while acting like railways stations in bringing far broader benefits.
“A railway is worth the millions of people who get to work because of it, the freight that reaches the port, and the whole economy that moves because the line exists,” she said. “Data centres are the same kind of infrastructure.” Tim Rosenfield, and Oliver Curtis, are founders and co-CEOs of Firmus Technologies. Firmus co-chief executive Tim Rosenfield conceded the company, preparing for a float on the stock exchange, “could have done better” in consulting with northern Tasmanians. “We definitely could have approached the community earlier and their concerns are really valid,” Mr Rosenfield said. “We probably operated under the false assumption that people knew more about us than they did. “We are definitely course correcting … But I want people to understand that we are actually a good thing; not something big and scary.” He said the company’s closed-loop cooling system meant each centre’s water use was minimal, with the largest – at Long Reach – set to use 8.7 million litres a year. “A typical restaurant in a food court uses about 3.5ML a year,” he said.
Concerns about the noise of centres’ backup diesel generators and continuously operating cooling fans were also misplaced, he said. Firmus’s Long Reach centre would, for example, emit noise heard at the nearest home as no more than 30 decibels, “about the same background noise as if you’re in a library”. Mr Rosenfield defended the company’s insistence that Hydro Tasmania find the additional generation needed for its centres. “Their request is that we do this through them – it allows them to forecast across every asset … it’s just a contracting mechanism,” he said. He believed issues of power supply and water were adequately addressed via state agencies. While calls for a moratorium were a “logical” reaction to a previous lack of sufficient transparency by the industry, he did not believe it was needed. “What’s changed in the last couple of years is the emergence of AI factory environments with hundreds of megawatts and gigawatts of compute,” he said.
“That needs a radical approach to transparency that I don’t think the data centre industry has yet gone down the path of achieving. “So … it is probably a logical reaction to say we need to pause until we understand the impact on energy, the impact on water, on noise. But if you can be transparent … it’s not a scary thing.”
Source: Compiled by APN from media reports
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