Amanda McKenzie

And this is true of any industry.

You can't expect

an industry to regulate itself effectively.

Like sure, there'll be some players that are doing really good things, but there's inevitably players that are not participating in the way that we'd like.

So to level that playing field, you need to have appropriate regulation across the board.

And one of the big issues in this is that the renewable energy needs to be additional.

So if you're building a new data centre, that requires it being matched with new renewable energy, because otherwise, if it's just drawing on the grid, as I said before, that's diluting.

the overall renewables in the grid and might actually mean that we're bringing on more fossil fuels into our grid.

Because if you have a rapid expansion in new demand for energy, well, you don't have that elasticity in new renewable energy projects that are necessarily just going to match it in the grid.

So you might end up having coal-fired generators operating for longer.

You might have gas as a larger component of our energy.

Both of those things mean more pollution and higher prices.

I think water is a really important one.

And again, it requires government regulation because although some players are really working hard to get this right, others will not.

So being proactive and setting standards, early enforceable standards is important.

So things like ensuring that companies are not using drinking water, that they're recycling water within their plant.

There's a new operation of a data centre down near Hazelwood mine, which is using the water out of the old coal mine.

You know, you can't drink that water, of course, and it's not used for agriculture or other things.

So being really mindful about if there is going to be an increase in water usage within a context where Australia is becoming drier, we need to make sure we have the drinking water, the water for farmers, the water for our river systems, et cetera.

Government being really mindful to make sure that as data centres draw on that water, that it's done in the most appropriate way.