Data centres become dirty word as rollout faces rising opposition

Detailed summary

Data centres have become politically toxic in the US. More Australian neighbourhoods, concerned about amenity, appear to feel the same way.

But right now they're doing much more: they're at the centre of concern about how much their construction is stoking inflation.

And, they're a lightning rod for communities rising up against what they feel is the cost of rapid growth.

"Over the last year, we've obviously seen an absolute explosion in our pipeline," IBISWorld research analyst Andrew Ledovskikh says.

His research has found Australia currently has about 2.3 gigawatts (GW) worth of power capacity in 79 data centres.

That's enough to power about 1.5 million homes, depending how you work the numbers.

Planned projects would give Australia capacity estimated to be more than 10 times that — between 23 and 67GW — according to the Australian Energy Market Operator.

Not all projects make it, and Commonwealth Bank research forecasts 9GW of capacity by 2035.

"We really are just at the beginning. This is the moment where the water sort of recedes back into the beach and everything's calm before the tsunami hits."

For advocates such as Belinda Dennett, it's an "enormous opportunity", with a construction timeline supporting our economy.

Opening of the article, excerpted from ABC Business. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.