Mega data centres in bed with big gas: how fossil fuels are powering the AI boom
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to 7am.
What are the implications of mega data centres in Australia?
Right now, AI data centre mega hubs are being planned across Australia. Some are as large as 350 hectares. That's the equivalent of 175 MCG playing fields. And the energy they need to fuel them is just as huge, more than the total output of an entire coal plant. The solution? So-called shadow grids, built in partnership between the data centres and big gas, where gas-fired power plants are placed directly on site, powering the centres and generating huge emissions in the process. Today, Katan Joshi, climate expert and author on a new Greenpeace report, on the relationship between fossil fuel companies and data centres, and Australia's vulnerability in the AI race.
It's Monday, June 8. So, Katana, in Australia right now, we're seeing this wave of very large data centre proposals. And to begin with, would you mind just telling me a bit about some of these projects, about what it is that's being proposed, how big they are? Yeah, tell me about what we're seeing.
Australia's data center project proposals are massive at a global scale. These projects are now getting up into high hundreds of megawatts and even gigawatt scale, which is essentially what we're seeing in the US. Australia obviously has fewer. of these large projects, but the scale of each individual project, it's only getting bigger. I read of a project over the weekend that is 2.4 gigawatts. To give you a sense of scale, the current two largest projects that have actually applied for connections are one gigawatt. The one gigawatt facility in New South Wales, that's called the Mumra Road Campus. That one will have the energy consumption of all households in Australia. So not just in New South Wales or one part of Australia, all households in Australia.
So that gives you a sense of scale of how big it is.
In the global race for data centre investment, Australia is at the front of the queue. Abundant renewable energy, skilled engineers, available land and steady governance.
And so the reason that the Australian government is supportive or interested in these projects is because data centres are being sold essentially as the backbone of the AI economy.
The outlook for business investment remains robust with a solid pipeline of data centre and renewable energy projects.
So tell me a bit about the argument that's being made for why we should be supporting the development of these centres. What's the benefit?
The line that we see everywhere around the world kind of has two sides to it.
How are shadow grids impacting energy consumption?
The first is economic. Essentially, the implementation of the services provided by these data centers, specifically artificial intelligence, will cause a productivity boom.
We are expecting them to provide jobs like pathways for apprentices in the build out of these facilities and privileged access to our startups to computing power, which can be quite expensive for startups.
But that is not something that we're really seeing play out very much in companies that are particularly even the ones that are the heaviest adopters of AI systems. Some of them have small productivity gains, particularly those that are doing coding. That seems to be one area in which there is a slight increase in efficiency. But when it comes to all of the other stuff like text generation and image generation and videos, it is a pretty minor improvement for such a significant financial cost. Then the second argument they often use relates to jobs, and that's something that we know with real confidence has been exaggerated very significantly. A lot of the jobs are quite transient. You have a real, real burst of jobs during construction simply due to the scale of the data center growth.
And then there's very, very few jobs that are ongoing. Really, you just need someone to kind of walk the halls and maintain the systems.
Okay. And a lot of concern around data centers has focused on the costs in terms of the energy cost and the environmental costs. So can you talk to me a bit about that? What do we know?
Sure. I was lead author on a report that was released by Greenpeace Australia recently.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:10
2
What are the implications of mega data centres in Australia?
0:10–2:59
3
How are shadow grids impacting energy consumption?
2:59–6:41
4
What is the scale of data centre projects in Australia?
6:41–17:15
5
What arguments are made for supporting data centre development?
17:15–17:28
Speakers
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