Business · The Guardian Technology
Under a cloud: the growing resentment against the large datacentres sprouting across Australian cities
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When West Footscray resident Sean Brown takes his 19-month-old boy to the park, their walk passes an imposing new building cheerily spruiked as “Australia’s largest hyperscale AI factory”, a datacentre called M3.
Key facts
- Diesel generators on the site are reportedly expanding from 40 today to 100 at completion
- In Hazelmere, 15km east of Perth in Western Australia, community opposition is growing to a planned 15,000sqm, three-storey, up-to 120MW datacentre
- When West Footscray resident Sean Brown takes his 19-month-old boy to the park, their walk passes an imposing new building cheerily spruiked as “Australia’s largest hyperscale AI factory
- Local resident Daniel Bolger says it will sit next to what he calls “the lungs of Lane Cove: Blackman Park
Summary
He hates it: the construction noise from its constant expansion, the looming towers and the insistent background hum, the exhaust from the growing array of diesel generators that can help power the ranks of servers inside. “He is growing, neurologically, pulmonarily, physically, in the shadow of a facility whose cumulative environmental impact … has never been assessed,” Brown says. “They’re building something which is, frankly, terrible for the community. The centre has already grown several times, fuelling the endless appetite of this age of digital services and generative AI.