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NSW has $100 billion in data centre projects under consideration and is grappling with how to ensure enough energy supply while meeting its 2030 and 2035 emission reduction targets.
The baseline forecast from AEMO’s latest Integrated System Plan (ISP) forecasts around 1.7GW of peak demand from data centres by 2035 across NSW and the ACT, and around 34TWh of annual consumption nationally by 2035–36. This is one of the largest single sources of new load in Australian energy history.
As a result, AEMO warned that NSW could hit reliability constraints three years earlier than previously forecast, in 2030–31, not 2033–34.
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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
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