The AI boom is underway, and data centres are springing up around Australia, with New South Wales and Victoria leading the charge.

Dylan Bird is joined by Cam Walker, campaigns coordinator at Friends of the Earth, to get into the proliferation of data centres around Australia, why these centres are so energy and water intensive, parallels to the mining boom, and what the impacts are for local communities and the environment.

“We need, with data centres … to put in place frameworks that will protect communities that are going to have to host these centres, that will actually not derail the energy transition and which will not consume and absorb increasing amounts of our drinking water in a time as climate gets hotter and drier.”

Photo credit: Friends of the Earth Australia