Dr Say Yen Teoh, RMIT University 
Grid works for NextDC’s West Footscray data centre are on hold until at least February 2027, after residents objected to new high-voltage power poles in their streets. NextDC’s shares fell 42 per cent in a day.
Encouragingly, Jemena is now consulting the community and other stakeholders, and NextDC has committed to a board-overseen community engagement plan. Let’s hope that commitment holds.
Communities elsewhere are asking for the same pause. At the Senate inquiry, six councils from Sydney to Melbourne’s west pushed for a moratorium until national standards are in place. That is a good sign, and governments are listening. National Cabinet has agreed to mandatory national standards for energy, water and land use, with legislation planned for early 2027, and Victoria has released its Sustainable Data Centre Action Plan.
The stakes are high. Data centres are now Australia’s biggest construction category, with more than $18 billion of projects under way, about triple the figure a year earlier. Much of the demand is global: CDC has signed a 30-year, 555-megawatt deal with an unnamed US client.
A pause, not a stop
A pause is not a rejection of data centres. It is time to assess what we are building, reflect on who carries the costs, and plan how the benefits are shared. Sustainability supplies the test: John Elkington’s triple bottom line asks that environmental, social, and economic outcomes be weighed together.
Singapore shows it can work. It halted new data centres in 2019 and reopened in 2022 with clear rules. Growth resumed, and on better terms.
The missing piece: coordination
West Footscray shows what goes wrong without it. Planning, the data centre, and the grid upgrade ran on separate tracks. Nearby residents learnt of the works when 15-metre poles carrying up to 66,000 volts arrived to replace seven-metre wooden ones. Jemena has conceded it could have engaged better.
Jemena said putting the lines underground would cost more. Yet it also said large loads, such as data centres, pay the full cost of their connection. If the operator pays, the cheapest route need not run past people’s bedrooms. NextDC now says it is considering underground cables. Months of delay and a collapsing share price cost far more than planning the route with the community from day one.
Coordination also means not leaving councils behind. Under Victoria’s state fast-track pathway, the City of Melton says every data centre in its area has bypassed a council decision. Fast-tracking is not wrong. Fast-tracking ahead of sustainability standards and local coordination is.
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Coordinate before you connect. Bring residents, council, the state planning department, the electricity distributor, the water utility, and the operator to one table before approval. Residents get a say, operators avoid costly delays, and approvals stick.
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Choose the right place, not just the right distance. A buffer decides how far from homes, never where. Steer large campuses towards renewable energy zones, mostly in regional areas, near transmission and recycled water, through a national siting strategy. Regional hosts must share the benefits, not just the burden. Where cables must pass homes, underground them at the operator’s cost. Operators connect more cheaply, and the grid grows by plan, not piecemeal.
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Bring your own clean energy and water. New, firmed renewables and recycled water, not a bigger share of what households already use. Household bills and drinking water stay protected; operators lock in supply for decades.
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Show who it serves and what it uses. Communities cannot weigh a bargain they cannot see. Require operators to report publicly, in aggregate, how much capacity serves Australians and how much energy and water they use. Governments gain the data to plan; operators gain trust.
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Share the benefits across the triple bottom line. Environmental: renewables, recycled water and, where feasible, waste heat the community can use. Social: a community fund, training pathways and a real say in operations. Economic: local suppliers, local jobs and partnerships with local universities and TAFEs. Report on each, every year.
Operators get certainty. Communities get a voice. Governments get investment that lasts.
Before approvals resume at full pace, every project should pass a triple-bottom-line test. Environmental: are its energy and water supplies sustainable? Social: does the host community have a say and a share? Economic: who does it serve, and what value stays here? The pause gives us time to answer.
Let’s use it.
Dr Say Yen Teoh is an Information Systems expert at RMIT University specialising in digital transformation and AI, examining how emerging technologies can address sustainability and resilience challenges.
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