A recent town hall meeting hosted by Greenpeace Australia Pacific at the Lane Cove library revealed growing frustration among locals regarding the rapid expansion of data centres in their area. Attendees reported that they were not consulted before their neighborhood was designated as a hub for these large-scale facilities. One of the proposed sites is located just 16 meters from the nearest residence and 160 meters from a primary school.<\/p>\n
Flood, a community voice at the event, highlighted that if four planned data centres are approved within the industrial park, approximately 50% of existing businesses would be forced to relocate, resulting in significant job losses. Felipe Tanaka, a 40-year-old business manager, stated he has been notified that his operations must move. He expressed shock at the development, noting that thousands of local positions could disappear in the coming years.<\/p>\n
“Most of our 300 to 400 workers here are locals,” Tanaka said. “Having to move will probably see half of my employees gone.” While data centres can create over a thousand construction jobs, research indicates this drops to roughly 100 permanent roles once the facility becomes operational.<\/p>\n
NSW Treasurer Mookhey defended the expansion, arguing that the economic value lies not in direct employment at the centres but in the broader business activity they attract. He pointed to commitments from tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon to locate skilled operations in New South Wales as a positive indicator.<\/p>\n
However, critics remain unconvinced. Flood questioned the tangible benefits, noting that it is unclear what specific services these centres will provide. She referenced reports that much generative AI usage consumes vast amounts of energy for trivial purposes, such as viewing cat GIFs, which requires energy equivalent to running a microwave for an hour.<\/p>\n
“They’re telling us this is essential… that we need to have these centres in our neighbourhood but they’re not saying what it’s for,” Flood said. “When our drinking water, energy and land is being used for generative AI slop, that is not giving any value back.” Some names in this report have been changed to protect identities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Residents and business owners in NSW are voicing concerns that proposed data centres will displace local jobs and strain water and energy supplies without clear community benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[405,406,407,409,408,193,11,10],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-australia","tag-data-centres","tag-greenpeace","tag-local-government","tag-nsw","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}