Data centres in Australia: your questions answered

The Conversation , CC BY-SA Community opposition to large-scale data centres is growing.

Critics are calling for a pause on data centre development, in line with other jurisdictions such as New York, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has ruled this out .

We put a call-out to our audience: what questions do you have about data centres? We were quickly overwhelmed with responses and had to close the survey.

This avid response cemented our decision to take a deeper dive into data centres.

From almost 350 questions, here were the most common ones.

Click a question to jump to the answer.

1.

What data is stored in them, and who owns it? 2.

Are they regulated? How? 3.

Do communities get a say in where they go? 4.

Why do they need to be located near where people live? 5.

What’s in it for us? Why does the government want them? 6.

Where do the profits go? 7.

Can the water be recycled? 8.