Feeding The Beast
The Hungry Beast that is Data Centres and Why Australia Isn’t Prepared
Alexander Hoysted
There’s an interesting contradiction shaping up in the digital economy.
The same AI models that promise to optimise the energy grid are consuming it faster than we can rebuild it.
And yet, most of the infrastructure behind that transformation — the data centres that power AI, cloud, and compute — still runs on “green” energy certificates rather than actual renewable supply.
When Green Isn’t Green
In Australia, many data centres already claim to be “carbon neutral” through a mix of power purchase agreements (PPAs) and offsets.
While these are critical for the energy transition, they sidestep the underlying reality to data centre power consumption: namely, that it’s a lot:
A single query to an LLM uses between 3 - 10x the data of a Google search, up to 2.9 watt-hours.
2030 forecasts put global demand for AI data centres at 327 gigawatts, 70% of the US’ actual consumption in 2024.
As the AirTrunk Sustainable Resource Management Whitepaper (2025) points out, sustainability can’t rely on averages and accounting. To be meaningful, renewable claims must align energy use with real-time generation and local resource constraints like water, cooling, and grid congestion.
The AI Factor
The timing couldn’t be worse. As AI models scale, their power demands are unprecedented. Here are some of the effects we’ve already seen around the world:
Ireland paused new data-centre connections in 2022 after AI and cloud growth drove energy use to 18% of the national grid.
Singapore froze approvals for three years, reintroducing them only under strict efficiency and sustainability rules earlier this year.
Sweden now mandates waste heat reuse and public disclosure of PUE (power usage effectiveness) and carbon intensity for large data centres.
In the US, Bloomberg recently wrote a piece linking rising electricity prices with the arrival of data centres - by a factor of 267%.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s water consumption for cooling grew by 34% last year alone, and AI training runs for models like GPT-4 have been estimated to consume over 700,000 litres of water-equivalent cooling globally.
The resource consumption of data centres is going to hit Australia well before 2030. We currently have the third-largest pipeline of new builds - globally. There’s a material gap between what’s coming, and how we manage it.
The Australia Gap
Australia is an excellent place to build data centres (having, for a start, more land to build on than Ireland or Singapore), but we’re lacking key pieces to make it sustainable:
No national data-centre sustainability code or real-time carbon disclosure.
No real-time tracking of energy consumption for hyperscalers.
No clear framework connecting data-centre growth to Renewable Energy Zones (REZs) or firming investment.
Contrast that with Europe’s approach:
The EU Energy Efficiency Directive (2023) requires all data centres above 500 kW to disclose energy source, water use, and efficiency metrics annually.
Google, AWS, and Microsoft are committing to 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030 — meaning every hour of every day, their operations match renewable generation in real time.
But Australia has no way to regulate this commitment. We’re behind the industry leaders. Embarrassingly, industry themselves are calling out for more regulatory clarity.
Why It Matters
If we allow our digital expansion to run on fossil fuels, we’ll spend decades untangling the damage. Infrastructure like this needs forward planning and carries a lot of inertia.
Data centres could add 10–15% to Australia’s total electricity demand by 2030, the size of the entire manufacturing sector (sans mining). The majority of that load will come from AI training, cloud compute, and constant cooling.
Handled wisely, this new demand could become a powerful driver for new renewables — anchoring new solar, wind, and battery projects in REZs and financing firming capacity. Handled poorly, it will lock in coal for another generation.
The difference isn’t technical, but political.
A Way Forward
The Carbon Zero Initiative is calling for four practical steps to make Australian data centres truly renewable:
Adopt Hourly Renewable Certification – upgrade the Guarantee of Origin scheme to reflect real-time consumption, not annual averages - we need real-time reporting into data centre energy use.
Mandate Transparent Reporting – follow the EU’s 500 kW disclosure rule for energy, water, and emissions for data centres.
Link Growth to Firming – tie new data-centre approvals to firmed renewable PPAs or co-located storage and generation. Incentivise the build where the power is green.
The world’s cleanest electrons and brightest minds can converge here, but not by accident. We’ve got the land, the investment, and the will to do this - but policy must account for the resource-intensity of these projects.
