Big tech’s power demands require true accountability

September 5, 2026 — 5:00am

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All of us need power. Not only to heat and cool our homes and our food, to supply us with water and light, but to support the ever-expanding array of communications devices that have become our second life and to store and distribute the information we create using them.

As cloud computing and artificial intelligence become an increasingly pervasive feature of our daily work and leisure, so too does the demand for new layers of infrastructure to support their growth.

For major companies in the AI, construction and technology sectors, this demand represents an immense commercial opportunity, measured in hundreds of billions of dollars. Our federal and state governments are also keenly aware of the investment and revenue-raising potential of data centres being built on these shores.

This week, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles was in San Francisco to talk to tech billionaires about how this “boom” – or perhaps it should be called a “rush” – would proceed. Everyone involved is talking a good game, with some tech companies assenting to build data centres at a distance from homes and to add renewable energy to the grid. Marles, who also wears the defence minister’s hat, has cast the whole enterprise as a national security........

© The Age