Essay by Eric Worrall
Its a tough call – supporting the Federal Government’s renewable energy programme vs having an economic future.
Data centres are incompatible with renewable energy targets
Monday 27 July 2026
The Northern Territory government is backing plans for a $40 billion data centre industry, with several ‘hyper-scale’ AI data centre campuses to be built on land around 30 kilometres from Darwin.
These data centres would be powered by 3 GW of electricity generation, which in turn would be powered by gas from the NT’s Betaloo Basin.
The plan puts the NT government at odds with the federal government, which has drafted rules that would force data centres to power their operations with new renewable energy sources.
The issue is expected to come to a head at a meeting of energy ministers this week, with the Queensland government publicly opposed to the renewable-only proposal, given a lack of modelling and clarity over how the plan would work.
Data centres are incompatible with renewable energy targets:
The debate comes as Australia is on the verge of a major boom in data centre investment.
…
Read more: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2026/07/data-centres-are-incompatible-with-renewable-energy-targets/
The rebellion has spread from Queensland to the Northern Territory.
The economics driving this rebellion are simple – whoever breaks ranks with the federal green mandate gets to pull hundreds of billions of dollars of dollars of high tech investment, secure well paid jobs for university graduates, a construction industry boom, and a deluge of state tax revenue.
Whoever sticks with the Aussie federal government’s plan to try to force data centers to build renewables gets left in the dust.
