Essay by Eric Worrall
“… We were all on board, thinking it was going to attract some really interesting small-scale industries like electric cars, photovoltaics … things like that. …”
How is that a good deal?’: Outrage at Southern Highlands data centre
Greg Bearup Senior writer
Jun 26, 2026 – 5.00amThe AI boom has landed in the wealthy region with a speculative plan to supersize a hub and power it with a new gas plant. Locals are fighting back.
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Cloud Carrier plans to build a data centre on the outskirts of Moss Vale, powered by a 673-megawatt gas power station.
If built, it would be among the largest gas plants in the state and would put a serious dent in the state’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
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“This [industrial park] had been sold to us as a positive thing,” says McKay.
“We were all on board, thinking it was going to attract some really interesting small-scale industries like electric cars, photovoltaics … things like that.
“We are a very environmentally minded community.
“We’re all trying to do the right thing on an individual small scale, and then you have this thing, which would not only wipe out any emissions we’re saving, but the emissions of the entire state.”
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Kean, now chairman of the federal Climate Change Authority, says data centres should be underwriting new renewables projects, not new fossil fuel projects.
Read more: https://www.afr.com/technology/not-in-my-back-paddock-data-centre-plan-sparks-fury-in-rural-nsw-20260619-p608gu
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What an interesting and complex situation.
The countryside in that part of the world is beautiful – amazing landscape, boutique restaurants.
And to be fair, the industrial park was sold as a green innovation hub.
Southern Highlands Innovation Park (SHIP)
Offering unique opportunities to attract sustainable and innovative industries, the SHIP positions itself as a major economic driver for the Shire and the broader region.
About the Project:
The Southern Highlands Innovation Park (SHIP) is a regionally significant employment precinct comprising some 1,053 hectares of industrial zoned land between Moss Vale and Berrima. This precinct provides a unique opportunity to attract sustainable and innovative industries and become a major employer and economic driver for the Shire and the broader region.
The adopted SHIP Master Plan outlines implementation strategies to realise its long-term vision for the precinct, including a targeted rezoning of the southeastern portion of the SHIP from E4 General Industrial to E3 Productivity Support. See below for more details on the Planning Proposal.
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Read more: https://participatewingecarribee.wsc.nsw.gov.au/ship
There is something terribly unrealistic about expecting “industries like electric cars, photovoltaics … things like that” to be powered by a few genteel solar panels on the roofs of the ecologically sensitive boutique cottage industries the locals obviously expected their new industrial park to attract, or a discrete solar park out of sight behind a hill nobody cares about.
Yet Australia has a terrifying shortage of onshore AI capacity. Australia’s strict data privacy laws make sharing code and data with offshore data providers legally risky. Without more onshore data capacity, the Australian economy, the cornerstone of the prosperity enjoyed by wealthy land owners in places like Moss Vale, will be at risk.
Anyone who thinks AI doesn’t deliver transformative productivity gains, I recommend you read my article on vibe coding, which contains a complete start to finish demonstration of how powerful this new technology is. My vibe code example was driven by AI data centers in the USA – to the best of my knowledge Australia has no domestic data centers which can deliver this level of capability. And it’s not just code – as my article below details, vibe production, which extends accelerated product development cycles to all sectors of the economy, is very rapidly becoming a thing.
In this case, despite my enthusiasm for AI and concern that Australia is slipping badly behind, I believe the locals in South Downs can reasonably claim to have been misled. Perhaps the locals should have done their own research, but in my opinion the prospectus for the industrial park which I quoted above could have been more open about the kind of industry they were hoping to attract.
Let’s hope the residents of Moss Vale get a resolution to their dilemma which they find acceptable, even if it isn’t everything they might have wanted.
You can only live a lie for so long before it comes back to bite you in the butt.
That’s exactly it – lies. The locals were wilfully ignorant – notice the first quote that they hoped the industrial park would attract small scale industries like electric cars and solar panels: in what universe are those ever small scale??
I hope they enjoy their well-earned poverty.
Hope is not a strategy.
Australia can’t support a car industry let alone an EV industry – it lacks the scale, technology, skills, experience, and capacity, plus wages are amongst the highest in the world, environmental regulations are amongst the harshest in the world, and electricity is amongst the most expensive in the world and getting worse.
Worse, barring middle of the Pacific island nations, Australia is arguably the country furthest from any market for export purposes, and the closest nations for export purposes are the likes of CCP China (1st for vehicle manufacturing), Japan (3rd for vehicle manufacturing), Hindu India (5th), South Korea (7th), Thailand (12th), and indonesia (16th). Notice a pattern? With the exception of Japan and South Korea, all the rest are ultra-low wage, low environmental regulation, and low electricity cost nations.
These imagining Australia might build a small scale EV sector are beyond dangerously delusional!!!
Well, yes, it actually takes energy to run any business, especially a manufacturing industry. Anybody who thinks otherwise is lying to themselves and their investors/stakeholders. And as we are seeing in the data center arena, the more high-tech it is, the more energy it needs, even if it is “small-scale”, whatever that means in that business.
EW, your demo used a US data center. That’s what undersea fiberoptic or satellite connectivity can do. AUS will be able to use US based AI data centers. But without CCGT to power them, it just won’t have any of its own and will never become an AI technology equal.
But for similar reasons, Australia no longer has any auto assembly plants with the associated tier 2 and 3 manufacturing jobs. Those cannot be powered by wind and solar either. The estimated AUS loss of high paying mostly blue collar jobs is at least 100,000.
It’s an interesting point, should Australia have data centers if the USA has demonstrated it can do data centers better? Classical economic theory, Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage, suggests economies maximise productivity when parties specialise in what they are good at.
But there are lots of ways Australia misses out if we don’t build our own data centers:
I think any nation which puts impediments in the path of onshore AI development is taking a grave risk with their future.
Obviously Australia and the USA are close allies, though our idiot Prime Minister has gone out of his way to offend President Trump on several occasions. But what if Australian companies choose to use Chinese AI outsourcing services instead? They’re likely to be cheaper, given China’s significant current energy advantages. Then those fears of leverage and supply chain vulnerability become far more significant concerns.
EW, all good points on behalf of AUS. I don’t disagree with any. Was only proffering a ‘second best’ consolation to your green AI predicament.
And along the lines of relative competitive advantage, if I were AUS I would not power the SHIP data center with natgas. You have lots of steam coal. Build an equivalent of Turk in Arkansas (USC coal). Turk is only a bit smaller than the proposed SHIP data center CCGT. That way, you keep liquifying your natgas and selling it to the rest of Asia at a big profit—AUS has a big logistical advantage over both US and Quatar LNG.
In fact, you want to get really nifty, have China build it there for you cheap and fast. They have hundreds of newish USC coal plant experience. US has one. AUS has none.
Absolutely Australia should be exploiting coal, but we’re sadly going through a period of extreme political incompetence.
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If they want “small scale”, EVs and PV aren’t small scale. EVs require tons of materials mining and refinement like Copper, Tungsten and Lithium while PV Solar requires tons of other materials mining like Quartz and Coal to purify the Silica into Silicon.
EVs also require lightweight plastic components which needs Oil and Gas development for Petrochemicals
I agree Eric, If people in the regions want to attract industry and well-paid jobs, they are going to have to accept the condition that these require cheap reliable 24/7 power generation, that simply can’t come from `renewables’.
Until Australia finally recognizes that there is no effective climate crisis, industrial emissions have virtually nothing to do with modern global warming and CO2 is a real benefit to society, we can’t have any real economic progress and improve our society. This is clearly the main political problem facing Australia and the West in general.
If we get rid of the UN/EU imposed climate imperatives and get back to common sense conventional centralised power systems, we can halve our power costs and attract new businesses like AI and high-tech manufacturing.
It is only environmental ideology that is holding us back, give Australia a chance to fight back against these regressive globalist illusions and we can regain our once lauded place in the sun.
Even just round-trip delay of data transference might interfere with some applications (about a quarter of a second for a NYC-Melbourne, Australia connection) and longer routes imply slower maximum transmission rates. That, plus reliability and national security concerns dictate nations have their own data centers.
Latency & Edge Computing (Performance)
Maximum Distance: 10 – 50 milesLatency Allowance: Under 1 to 10 millisecondsCritical Use Cases: High-frequency financial trading, autonomous vehicles, AR/VR, and real-time IoT processing.Why: The speed of light in fiber optic cables is a hard physical limit (roughly 124 miles per millisecond). Every extra mile adds to the round-trip delay.
Every node that a signal has to transit between sender and receiver adds a few hundred microseconds as well. Each way.
Much ado about nothing.
Not if you’re a high-frequency trader
To the person who downvoted me.
Nobody on the planet cares if a transaction takes a quarter of a second to complete, unless they are an F1 driver going through qualifying. Your ping problems regarding AR/VR situations make me think you are a neckbeard living in your parents basement playing video games.
Oh yes it matters. Trading Data communications between London and Bristol relies on Wireless rather than fibre optic because the delay in fibre is too long.
You are referring to this as a positive. I loathe the concept. Wealth creation without producing anything. Making transactions based on microseconds is immoral. Smacks of insider trading.
I don’t see it any different to a bank accepting a bank cheque and not clearing it for several days so that they can invest it in the short term money market for their own benefit.
Ah, yes, immoral. But not quite like insider trading, which usually has innocent losers. And that bank analogy–not quite like that either, since the reason, aside from regulations, banks withhold access to funds for a couple days is to make sure the check actually clears the bank it is drawn on, thereby protecting innocent account holders, including maybe the depositor.
Nope, not the same at all. Sounds like feelings to me.
Ignorance is bliss. Of course, delays matter to production. When I worked in the phone company some HQ brilliant people thought connecting all Directory Assistance operator terminals to a large computer in a major city could reduce local computer expenses. That was when we still had only T-carrier on co-ax cables and numerous repeaters were needed to go any distance.
Anyway, they found out that added about half a second to the operator’s work time on every call. A significant expense. Everyone thought that T-carrier operated at “blinding electronic speed”, ha. Every repeater must read data in, correct it, and send it out. Delays over 600 miles became intolerable.
The real kicker was that you DON’T rely on just one route for something like that. It’s not just redundant cables in the same trench, but entirely different routes so when someone digs up a cable, you have back-up. Same problem with renewables, back-up is, or should be, a required part of the system before even starting. Look at the grid itself. When you get past the main transmission lines, there are lots of duplication to prevent single failure problems.
It’s critically important for zero data loss systems. Each database write has to be synchronous to both the local and remote disk mirrors. Any delays effectively slow all of your disk writes and can drastically reduce the transaction throughput rate.
It’s somewhat counterproductive to have storage cache and SSDs to reduce write times, then throw away all all the gains by having your mirror site 1,000 km away. We were worried when the powers that be came up with the bright idea of switching to a new secondary data centre 120 km away.
“Typical ping times vary across regions:
Local Ping: 15 ms to 30 ms within mainland cities (e.g., Shanghai to Beijing).
US to China: 150 ms to 160 ms between the US West Coast (e.g., Los Angeles) and major Chinese cities like Shanghai.”
I think probably not data centers if the USA.
And the Australia to LA or Australia to Shanghai ping time is even higher.
Sydney to LA is around 250ms round-trip.
That is almost usable for interactive user sessions, but totally impractical for anything server to server.
If OZ doesn’t build the data centres it needs for itself then it’s just offshoring its emissions and becomes a climate hypocrite. 🙂
Australia and its cheap solar power potential might have leverage if it makes it easy to get permits to build and hook up the data centres (things that are a bottleneck in the US) and power and cool them with solar – during the day in OZ would be nighttime in the US when the cheap solar isn’t available and solar ain’t cheap if it’s coming from a battery.
Even better: Build the center on the grounds of a mothballed coal plant that’s been removed from the grid, and dedicate it to compute.
america is NOT our friend were a convenience to them until..we arent . ditto UK
Methinks the concerned inhabitants of Moss Vale have been sold a mirage.
Yep.
they heard the word green eco or similar thatll do it everytime
I’d say childish: “babyish, infantile, juvenile, puerile; silly, inane, fatuous, jejune, foolish, stupid, irresponsible and naive” (Oxford).
Clearly at the very least they are naive – they should have realised nobody can set up a boutique solar or EV plant without a sodding great power plant. But the prospectus in my opinion crossed the line by being less than straightforward about what the plan was.
Eric,
Yes, but how many times have innocent folk like you and me been misled by green statements that do not disclose their entire story?
Is this not a case of (sob, sob) naive people getting a little of their own back?
Geoff S
I hear you Geoff but I tend towards the view two wrongs don’t make a right in this case. The sooner society gets back to running things in an honest and evidence based manner, the better.
But did the locals not do any thinking, let alone critical thinking?
IGNORANT!
Moss Vale, NSW, is inhabited by Rich Retired Snobs and Nimbies.
Well we’ve got to live somewhere!
That’s Bowral, not Moss Vale 🙂
I believe the cliffs in the picture are part of the Blue Mountains geological complex. At the bottom of these you can see thick coal deposits which, I was told, extend under that part of Australia all the way northwards beyond Newcastle. Why not use it ‘responsibly’?
Or install a small nuclear plant which won’t bother anyone, powered by Australia’s abundant uranium and thorium reserves. All conversations to be had.
EZ, I was intrigued by your comment so just researched it. (Boy, Google AI makes things fast and easy now.) You are correct—massive seams of both coking and thermal coal. A recently proposed underground coal mine (too much overburden for open pit, as the photo clearly shows) was voted down by Moss Vale only a few years ago. Greenie objections.
You beat me to it. They hate all things fossil in Moss Vale. There is plenty of coal underneath but they will not allow it to be dug up. I know some of the green protesters uop there and they are not backing down.
Actually Ed, our Permian black coal basins extend 2000km north to Townsville in Queensland, and they are overlain by younger steaming coal basins over half of that distance, so we have hundreds of years of resources that we can use for power, steel, or petrochemicals should we wish to.
Sacrificing our current gentile lifestyles for a highly uncertain climate future is plain madness if not totally stupid, but we are in hands of ignorant politicians who don’t know any better.
The next State and federal elections can’t come quickly enough!
Mr. Kean
What is your goal? Do you want to have an AI Data Center and a Community Power Plant for the Data Center that can claim they emit near zero emissions into the atmosphere?
To make that possible the Community Power Plant has to Host their combusted emissions to another Community Group who will convert those emissions into good paying full time jobs and money.
This is not new technology. It has been working and is still in operation for over 40 years, just not yet in the AI and Power Plant market.
http://www.SidelSystems.com
There’s been a lot of talk in Australia about forcing AI data centers to use renewables. For some reason data center operators are less than enthusiastic.
“… We were all on board, thinking it was going to attract some really interesting small-scale industries like electric cars, photovoltaics … things like that. …”
The ignorance of that quote is stunning.
No one is looking at what AI is already accomplishing.
Traditional cement production is responsible for roughly 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Using AI, the formula has been modified, using the same production plants and supply chain, to produce cheaper concrete having the same physical properties. It also reduces CO2 emissions cement is responsible for by 30%. That represents a 2.4% reduction of total global greenhouse gas emissions. The CO2 emissions of ALL NG power plants is estimated to be about 6% of the total. The green cement market is surging, projected to reach over $74 billion by 2033. This won’t be its only contribution to reducing emissions. Supply chain management, airline scheduling/routing and other endeavors are perfect for AI optimization.
On another front, an enzyme created using AI has been developed that breaks plastics down. For the first time, enzyme-recycled plastic undercuts the price of brand-new, oil-derived virgin plastic ($1.87 per kilogram). This makes industrial enzymatic recycling a highly attractive, self-sustaining commercial business.
Those fighting new data centers are working against their own objectives, a cleaner world.
Will it be the same cement if the recipe is changed?
Can AI change recipes without a laboratory?
https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/mining/the-cement-manufacturing-process/
AI has been used to find solutions to difficult problems, so IMO the story about the concrete is entirely plausible. You still need a lab to test the new recipe of course.
but I bet it cost to rejig the cement and for what? fictitious GHG? we can burn the plastic for power
and yeah claims of same physical properties?
like a patent for GMO saying new novel and then selling to us as same same ..if it was “substantially equivalent” ( their claim to flog it )same same then why the patents ? if same same is ok then buying a holden and getting a ford is same same too;-) 4 wheels seat n engine isnt the same really
They are like children aren’t they?
“We are a
very environmentally minded community.bunch of brainwashed, virtue-signaling idiots.”There. Fixed.
As a resident of the NSW Southern Highlands for many years (but now Tasmania), I have been opposed to inappropriate development in what is still a notably attractive area. However, the area towards Berrima from Moss Vale where SHIP is, is part of the main SW transport and development corridor from Sydney towards Canberra and Melbourne. Large commercial and residential developments along that corridor are to be expected, and many are well underway – such as the new city of Wilton. SHIP would be an appropriate and valuable asset in the corridor, particularly as it would – if planned sensibly – provide additional reliable electricity in the area. The corridor should also be understood as separate from the rural and semi-rural Southern Highlands which will become even more valuable as an attractive area to visit for corridor workers and residents. IOW, with sensible planning, everyone wins. OK, OK, that would be a first for Australia, but we can live in hope can’t we?
In other words they don’t know the first thing about economic development or project due diligence. Surprise surprise
Mr. Kean
If you are truly interested there are ways to have an AI Data Center and the required power plant operating and be a positive community infrastructure for South Dawns and Moss Vale.
Done right the AI Data Center and the Community Power Plant could claim they are operating at near zero emissions. AI Data Centers and Power Plants typically do not create many new jobs, but if this Community Power Plant were to Host the combusted emissions, these emissions could be transformed into hundreds of good paying full time jobs and money.
Kean, Turnbull and all the other “leftists pretending to be conservatives” were the ones that started the rot in the Liberal Party, adopting many Green/Labor far-left policies…
… and why the Liberal Party will be lucky if they can fill a short bus after the next election.
oh selling unicorn farts n rainbows to some other suckers to claim its all ok now emissions got greenwashed by planting trees? go away
Eric, you are too kind on the middle-class ignorance of anything to do with CC apart from the clarion calls of the media, government and other cheer squads of climate hysteria.
I live in the area. I was in a chat with 8 people recently, and CC came up; someone mentioned climate deniers. I put my hand and said, “Me”, “Ask me anything you like”. Not one word from any of them, all suposedly well educated people, but they will not discuss it with anyone who disagrees.
Their stupidity is as clear as day – Electric Cars and photovoltaics?
‘Moss Vale to Steal the World from China’ – might have been a better headline?
I agree their expectations were absurd. But IMO the prospectus played into that absurdity instead of being honest, which IMO crosses the line.
ah yes BUT… its ALL about the $$$$
fvk the truth its a cash grab
The folks complaining can just live in a cave and get the monthly welfare check from the taxpayers. If the place needs a large power plant the whole state is short of power thanks to the leftist not in my back yard mental set. I notice none of them have given up any of their own computers , phones and other electronic gadgets. Renewables are not a reliable power source, Solar works about 30% of the time and zero at night. Wind is zero when the wind is not blowing. Any industry needs power 24/7.
It’s tragic that justifiable concern for considering the environmental impact of development has been hijacked by unscientific fear of carbon dioxide emissions and net zero nonsense. Alarmist propaganda deserves to be strongly countered, not promoted with media misinformation.
You have to admire the scale of ignorance on display when the spokesperson complaining says they thought it would attract small industries such as EV cars and photo voltaic manufacturing???
These eco minded representatives just have no clue about industry and its needs and certainly no clue about the scale of industry needed to make electric cars that are entirely eco friendly….not.
“Kean, now chairman of the federal Climate Change Authority, says data centres should be underwriting new renewables projects, not new fossil fuel projects.”
Yes, well, I’m sure the data centre management are quite happy to rely 100% on renewable power.
This area has been planned for mixed industrial development since the late 1970s. Today, what has developed so far is a typical mixed use industrial park. Not pretty by any stretch of the imagination. The SHIP planning proposal specifically deals with rezoning a portion of the land closest to residential neighborhoods from E4 industrial to E3 (Productivity Support). The intent is to promote activities that are compatible with residential neighbors. That E3 area was the principal focus of the planning process and included community outreach.
A much larger part of the industrial development zone remains as it was already, E4 General Industrial. A table within the planning document list the allowable activities in E4, including unspecified industrial. Nothing has changed there from the original zoning. Incidentally there is also a zone E5, which covers heavy industry, basically the pre-existing land disturbing and “dirty” industry, such as the large cement plant that supplies most of the region’s cement.
The proposed data center would be in this E4 general industrial zone, entirely compatible with the rezoning proposal and long range plans for the industrial Park. I have read the rezoning proposal as well as looked at the area on Google Maps. No one has been misled in this process. The rezoning and public meetings had little to say about the pre-existing E4 General industrial zone. If a data center is to be built there, there is nothing that prevents it legally. Given that adjacent areas are occupied historically with much larger and intrusive, heavy industry, such as the cement plant, town folk are unlikely to even notice the presence of a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant supporting a data center that by external appearances is just a big box.
If some in the local community don’t like it, likely for political reasons and the growing public resistance to data centers fueled by negative propaganda, then they can try to fight it. That may be an uphill legal battle, but they cannot claim that they were misled.
Thanks. That adds some much needed context.
{Yet Australia has a terrifying shortage of onshore AI capacity.}
really? we have 40 or so already
we have fvckall grid to carry it ditto water
and sorry but your game example seriously ?
serious stuff like med use not so bad- its always going to be used for MIL Kill of course
games and for ins n banks to diss workers and turn human help into a code? or to screen aged care recipients and REFUSE serious need cases already? that is basically robodebt renewed? NAH
and the big hint is all the get rich quick OS wannabes pushing in with lots of promises for F all actual proven benefit so far its a circle jerk as far as the invesment goes ZH did a good item on how theyre all funding buying into each other it fails? dot.coms going to look like a teaparty
lets sit back and watch for a few yrs a bums rush over a cliff wont do us any good FOMO FFS!
All together now after me in unison- fickles are cheaper… fickles are cheaper…
Electricity price spikes and batteries drain as wind drought tests green flag-bearer
I’m not a fan of the eco-activist crowd, but it does seem they’re victims of a bait-and-switch scheme here.
Yep, that’s my view after reading the park prospectus.
The words ‘green’ and ‘innovation’ make for strange bedfellows given the retarded nature of most – if not all – things green.