The federal government expects to settle new energy and water rules for massive AI data centres at a national cabinet meeting on Wednesday despite Queensland’s opposition, forcing it to create laws that override the defiant state.
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli has sworn to stand his ground at Wednesday’s meeting against rules that would require data centre projects to purchase their power from new renewable energy projects, backed by gas, so the energy-hungry facilities do not create more demand that would push up power prices.
The Queensland and Northern Territory governments say they will not sign on to a standard that ties data centres to renewable projects at the exclusion of coal and gas.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen had already flagged the federal government’s intention to legislate so-called “causer pays” energy rules next year for big facilities, even if all states and territories signed on, allowing the Commonwealth to overrule dissenters and prevent data centre proponents from playing the states off against each other.
On Sunday, Mr Bowen said the government would find agreement with the states if it could, and legislate to ride over the top of those who opposed the federal government.
“The Queensland government’s made their views pretty clear; we disagree with them, and we’re proceeding without them,” Mr Bowen said.
“Queensland wants to take an open slather approach, let data centres be data centres approach. We don’t agree with that.
“We want data centre investment in Australia, but we want it to be in the best interest of Australians, and we’re not going to let Queensland run a race to the bottom which would see energy bills go up and reliability go down because they want data centres at any cost.”
