Goodman Group named its $1.2 billion Lane Cove data centre Project Mars. Mars is cold, rocky, and there’s not much there. Lane Cove is a leafy Sydney suburb with a primary school 160 metres from the site.
If a developer wants cold, rocky, and not much there, then Guyra, Glen Innes, Deepwater or a bunch of other spots in the Northern Tablelands have been sitting here the whole time. Come on up.
Both the state and federal governments want the data centres. The Minns Government has nineteen data centre projects worth $50.3 billion in the pipeline, a fast-track approval scheme, and a rule that operators must bring their own power and water.
Canberra has gone further. In March, the Albanese Government set out its expectations for data centre and AI developers. Top of the list: new facilities must “secure new and additional clean energy generation and/or storage to offset demand”, not just draw on the existing grid.
But they keep looking in the wrong place to put them. Lane Cove said no. Katoomba said no too, a data centre proposal there was pulled earlier this year after the council called it “the wrong proposal in the wrong location.”
Sydney does not want these things in its residential neighbourhoods, and understandably so. But the Northern Tablelands? Made for data centres.
We have the cool climate, making it easier and more efficient to keep those racks nice and cool; plenty of already cleared rocky paddocks no good for cropping and not near either environmentally protected lands or populations that are likely to object; and some of the best wind and solar resource in the state, all in a spot roughly halfway between Sydney and Brisbane. We also have a university in Armidale producing IT graduates who currently leave town to find work, and hungry local councils ready to work with any developer.
Even better than the Western Downs.
The only thing we are short on is water.
Actually that’s not true – Armidale and Glen Innes are both above average rainfall for NSW. Particularly east of the New England Highway, we get plenty of rain but we’re really bad at storing it, in the most part because of a conga line of state and federal governments that have failed to properly invest in water infrastructure.
Armidale is rated Category 5 for drought risk, with secure supply for only 60 per cent of its own population. An $800 million fix, including raising Malpas Dam, is sitting in state planning now, and its progress has been made an essential requirement for the New England Renewable Energy Zone. It wouldn’t be much work to increase the capacity of that proposal to support the data centres as well as the REZ, and a larger population into the future – and have two industries footing the bill rather than ratepayers.
Glen Innes has needed a bigger dam since the 1980s, when the idea died because ratepayers could not carry the cost alone. Plenty of people there are still drinking brown water because of that failure to invest in water infrastructure. The current Deepwater masterplan consultations include a little water infrastructure upgrade too, probably wouldn’t be a big leap to consider a smaller dam there as well if you want to expand the zone. The area is desperately in need of economic development, within the REZ, and ready to deal.
We need serious infrastructure money regardless of what gets built on top of it. So why not let the data centre operators pay for it? Part of the deal could be fixing the water supply infrastructure so that all the town can benefit while they add and upgrade the infrastructure they need for themselves. Be a lot easier to get energy and data centre companies to pay for it than getting our current state and federal governments to care.
As an added incentive, Armidale and Walcha each already have a viable large scale renewable energy project ready to go. Squadron Energy paused its 426 megawatt Boorolong project near Armidale. Origin paused its 870 megawatt Skye Ridge project near Walcha. Both paused in just the last couple of weeks – still fresh! – not because the wind or the country was wrong, but because energy companies everywhere are tightening belts and finishing their most advanced projects first.
Both projects already satisfy exactly what Canberra is demanding of data centre operators: new, additional, clean generation, fully assessed and ready to build.
(If you could get property owners to change their mind again, or just buy the properties, you could also put Doughboy back on the table and have three viable large scale renewable projects already scoped and waiting.)
Pair a large scale data centre with each one and everybody wins. The data centre gets built with the clean power the federal rules require. The renewables project gets finished instead of sitting idle, giving money to our communities and drought proof income to our farmers (and helps the federal government towards its climate change target, if you care about that). Our region gets the investment, the jobs, and the water infrastructure upgrade we have been asking Sydney and Canberra to deliver for decades.
Win, win, win, winny win, win.
Of course, we should not wait for some bureaucrat in Sydney or Canberra to notice this. I’m not even sure they know we exist.
But we can be out selling it ourselves. Someone should be ringing Origin and Squadron, or Open AI and Anthropic, Goodman Group and every data centre developer fighting a losing battle in the suburbs, and telling them Mars is available. It is called the Northern Tablelands, and it comes with energy ready to go and a water plan attached.
End Rant.
Dr RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and holds a PhD in political behaviour. She is also a well known migraine and health advocate, and the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.
All opinion and comment on New England Times Engage is the opinion of the writer and not New England Times.
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