Let's Talk: Data Centres

Let’s Talk Data Centres: Promising us the Moon, Costing us the Earth

Big tech, Artificial Intelligence and big windowless factories that hum – you’ve probably heard about them in the news, now it’s time to learn about what we can do about it.

If you feel like data centres are everywhere at the moment, you’re not wrong. Over the last few years, artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceX and Amazon have grown their demand for computational power to fuel their artificial intelligence products, and that computational power comes from GPUs housed and operating in data centres. Increasingly large data centres.

And it’s the size and scale of this data centre demand that’s the real problem. AI demand is responsible for more than 90% of new data centre developments, and they’re responsible for 100% of the massive data centres you see on the news. With that massive size comes a massive appetite for energy, water and land, and a massive impact on communities here in Australia and around the world. But communities are fighting back, demanding more rules over when and where a data centre can be built, where they can get their energy from, and questioning whether we want these AI factories to be built in the first place.

Join Abigail Boyd, Greens NSW MP and guest speakers to unpack what the AI data centre boom actually means for our communities and planet – what these projects are for, how they get approved, who benefits and who bears the impacts. 

Let's Talk is a regular online series. Each month is a different guest speaker and topic.

If you have questions about the event or need technical support please email office@nsw.greens.org.au or call the Greens NSW office on (02) 9045 6999.

This event will be held online. Please contact office@nsw.greens.org.au with any accessibility requests as early as possible so we can make suitable arrangements.

If you are under 18, your parent or guardian will need to contact the event organiser directly to let them know there will be someone under 18 attending.