Of all the commentators on Wednesday about Australia’s much vaunted new deal on AI – and its global breakthrough plan to manage the rollout of this next-gen tech infrastructure in terms of energy, water and land use – it was the Housing Industry Association that landed with a thud on what the biggest problem would be.
Housing.
It’s ironic that the outfit that usually gives us the biggest grief in the transition to a more sustainable net zero built environment is the one that for once sang the right tune.
AI would suck out our resources, said Simon Croft the association’s chief executive of industry and policy who took part in one of our earlier “Big Debates” on rating tools.
“While data centres may play an important role in Australia’s economic future, governments must not lose sight of the country’s most urgent challenge – delivering enough homes for a growing population,” he said on Wednesday.
“We are already seeing growing competition for land, electricity, water and infrastructure at a time when governments are struggling to deliver the housing supply needed to improve affordability.”
Bingo.
He didn’t go into much more detail, but engineers and associated skill sets who work on anything electric or data centre adjacent say that the immense power of AI will suck the life from our collective resources.
Never mind that the PM Anthony Albanese has promised in a glitzy USyd speech on Wednesday that Australia would defend its infrastructure integrity and make AI pay for its own renewable energy infrastructure. And that Australia’s creatives would be protected through copyright law – a world first several commentators said.
Never mind that he talked tough on Australia not “just adopting or accommodating” AI, but rather “designing it, making it, building capacity right here”.
That is the problem, actually.
Accommodating this Trojan Horse means that the capacity it wants to build won’t leave much for the rest of us.
And that’s just the land use and resources story. Before we get to what it’s doing to humanity at large.
The property prices, the property prices
At Lane Cove recently in Sydney’s lower north shore, residents gathered to organise opposition to data centres that reportedly favour the location for their facilities.
There’s already five there according to a local newspaper but the next one to hit the suburb will be “a 100-foot wall with generators, fans and cooling towers on it going 24/7. I’m going to be bathed in noise, I fear,” one resident told The AFR.
It’s not just the noise and unattractive visuals that will soar, it’s the property prices that will come down.
“I will be selling, and therefore exposed to whatever property hit comes along because I will not be able to live like that.”
Not long after, the PM was paving the way for more centres to come to Australia with all the finger shaking provisos he could muster.
Social licence could be had, he said, but it needed to be implemented and agreed to now – not when the horse has bolted.
If the horse looks like it’s a bolter it will always be a bolter and no amount of cajoling can turn it into an ambler.
But it’s the Trojan horse we’re worried about.
The PM’s new office of AI gives more of the right kind of signal – it makes whatever’s in the name look more important (office of Women, or even a department of Indigenous Affairs etc) but does it really change the game?
AI is doing it for themselves – but at our expense
Albo said he wanted AI to “underwrite new power supply”, “pay for their full share of grid connection” and to “build new renewable generation”.
Water hogs and energy vampires
According to Adam Bandt on the ABC’s 7.30 on Wednesday night, looking cool calm and collected in his role as CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation (despite Sarah Ferguson having a go at him for using a “Greens” phrase from the party he previous led and is apparently not now allowed to use) the outlook was grim.
“It’s good that we’re going to see legislation,” he said.
“We heard about the strongest possible protection for copyright – that’s a good thing. But we didn’t hear about the strongest possible protection for water and for energy.”
Data centres are “water hogs” and “energy vampires”, he said, with forecasts of up to 11 per cent of our total grid by 2030. One centre alone will have the energy consumption as the Tomago Aluminium Smelter.
“And the water authorities are getting applications for data centres that want to the equivalent of 80,000 homes.
“So we’re not talking about trivial things. We’re talking about very very serious users.”
The US is all NIMBY on abundant AI
In the US it’s worse.
Prometheus, Meta’s data centre in Ohio is slated to use the energy generally consumed by 1 million homes. Or a large nuclear reactor, The Economist said in a recent piece.
But there’s pushback on a scale not seen since the anti climate action folk got going against wind farms.
According to Gallup polling 71 per cent of Americans don’t want these centres in their hood.
New York has placed a one year moratorium on them.
Data Center Watch says almost $190 billion worth of data centre projects in the US were blocked or delayed in the first quarter of this year alone”.
And in Virginia, Prince William County voted unanimously against a plan for the largest data centre development in the world, known as the Dulles South Innovation Center, which was anticipated to consume “multiple” gigawatts. If it was in Australia could the proponents simply go to the state to override the locals, or even the Feds if the size of investment was decided to be in the “national interest” and aligned with promises on copyright or whatever?
The big question in Aus is will the sensible centre hold?
We’re not particularly swayed by promises and pacts. The new rules of engagement out in the world today don’t favour a rules based order.
Belinda Dennett, CEO of Data Centres Australia is the forward flank of this industry’s incursions into our hood.
Take special note of how she defended her industry on ABC’s 7.30.
She told the show that these centres currently use 2 per cent of the energy grid.
“That’s about the same as shopping centres,” (and we can all live with friendly shopping centres, right? Until we look under the hood and observe their energy guzzling selves).
“It will increase as we build more capacity, around 6 per cent by 2030”. Whether that was by another 6 per cent or to 6 per cent was not clear.
But take special note of how she slides into the tactics beloved of oil companies and bottling giants for decades.
“The customer uses 80 per cent of the energy. The operator around 20 per cent, so it’s done jointly”
Think carefully about that… listen to the words, detach yourself for a minute from the emotion of the self blame that will immediately spring to mind when the tech bros tell us they’re only giving us more of what we consume and what we clearly want.
And remember it’s classic Coca-Cola, packaging and oil industry tactics telling us we just need to buy less of their stuff, take shorter showers and recycle the garbage.
But Coke spent countless millions to stop container deposit schemes and at the same time funded Clean Up America and Clean Up Australia so it looked like a good corporate citizen and was absolutely earning its social licence.
In Dennett’s view the energy consumption rise was fine.
“That is manageable. If you look at Australia’s data centre capacity,” she said.
“It’s about 1/50 of what’s happening in the US.”
Or was happening.
If we’re going to go All American on this AI road then let’s be full throttle about it.
Not In My Backyard!
