Planning for a data centre future

CHARIS PALMER

Editor-in-Chief, The Energy

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Data centres in Australia could become either “digital smelters” concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne and pushing wholesale energy prices up by 26 per cent or they could emerge as “managed green hubs” helping to moderate energy prices and keeping Australia on track to net zero.

That’s the view of Professor Luis Gonzalez, chief data and AI officer at the largest renewable energy provider in the Philippines, AboitizPower.

Speaking in March to the Energy Consumers Australia conference – a forum for residential and small business energy users – Gonzalez had a strong message.

“A lot of data people have no clue how the energy industry works and a lot of energy people don’t understand what data technology looks like. So we have to start talking to each other.”

Gonzalez says nobody truly knows how much energy data centres will be using in 25 years’ time. But data centres are not just going to be for storage, availability and maybe some processing like they are today, he says. “They're becoming more and more what we call inference engines, and an inference engine has the ability to turn data into intelligence.”

To put this into perspective, Gonzalez says that today only about 3 per cent of the world’s population have interacted with AI and only 0.3 per cent have a paid license to use it.

“Once this becomes 20 per cent of our population, the entire explosion of intelligence will drive the energy industry,” because you cannot obtain this intelligence without a vastly greater input of energy. We’ve got to the point where energy equals intelligence, Gonzalez argues. This is the key to understanding that the data centres of today are not what data centres will be in the future.

The current global model of exponential growth of centralised data centres has to change towards one where computing becomes more distributed, Gonzalez says. Perhaps even down to the community or household level.

In the meantime, he says, “we really do have to create an incentive for data centres to become a driver of green energy, not a bottleneck that would force us to go back to coal”.

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Green data?

The latest planning by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) sees data centre energy consumption reaching about 6 per cent of the national energy market by 2029-30, with a large margin for error based on to what extent AI is taken up.

But the Australian Industry Group (AIG) is already warning that the rate of growth in demand could be larger and faster than anticipated by AEMO.

“ There is a lot of importance being placed by all governments and ministers beyond energy, in not unduly constraining an important source of economic growth,” AIG climate change and energy director Tennant Reed recently told a member briefing.

“But there is some awareness of the possibility of significant [energy] pressures, and that it's worth ensuring this is managed beforehand and not too late.”

In his set of recommendations for Australian policymakers, Gonzalez advocates a “managed green hubs” ideal, where pricing signals would steer data centres towards Renewable Energy Zones, rather than simply to locations with proximity to fibre.

He recommends that policymakers view data not as a corporate byproduct, but as a strategic asset that requires localised digital infrastructure.

The Australian Government’s National AI Plan released last December points to large investments by tech companies Firmus, Amazon and Microsoft and says the country’s “abundant renewable energy potential, robust privacy protections and strategic Indo-Pacific location can make Australia an AI hub for the region”.

“The nations around the world that grab this opportunity, that successfully deploy AI, make AI, use it in their companies, instil those skills in their workers, they are the countries that will rise up the ranks of the world's most prosperous nations,”  according to Assistant Federal Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy, Andrew Charlton.

“And those countries that do not, those countries that fall behind, that fail to grab this opportunity, they will fall down the list of the world's most prosperous nations.”

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Sources

[1] Main banner image - NextDC's data centre at Tullamarine, VIC. Image from ADP Consulting.

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