Speaker 1: Back in twenty nineteen, a new venture in the Australian
Speaker 1: Outback looks set to export our solar power to the world,
Speaker 1: upending our neighbour's reliance on fossil fuels.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: One of the most ambitious projects in Australia right now
Speaker 1: is sun Cable.
Speaker 3: This is Australia's largest ever renewable energy project, a bold
Speaker 3: plan to turn an old pastoral station in the heart
Speaker 3: of the Northern Territory into a massive solar farm, transporting
Speaker 3: electricity first to Darwin via eight hundred kilometers of overhead
Speaker 3: transmission lines, then on to Singapore through four three hundred
Speaker 3: kilometers of subsea cables.
Speaker 4: Some Cable is a company that was set up initially
Speaker 4: to export a very large amount of solar energy through
Speaker 4: the construction of a submarine cable. It was quite a
Speaker 4: grand vision connecting Northern Australia to Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: Backed by billionaires Michael Cannon Brooks and Andrew Forrest. Some
Speaker 1: Cable was audacious in a scale and climate. At a
Speaker 1: Katown Joshi was drawn to it from the start. Back
Speaker 1: then he interviewed its founder and what he heard Sandlucke
Speaker 1: science fiction.
Speaker 4: And I was a little stunned by his descriptions because
Speaker 4: they were so sci fi. In fact, he mentions this
Speaker 4: thing called the Kardashev scale, which is this idea that
Speaker 4: civilizations progress along their development based on how much energy
Speaker 4: they consume. And it was a really fascinating and surprising
Speaker 4: way to talk about something which was a big infrastructure
Speaker 4: projects for Australia. And I have to say I really
Speaker 4: enjoyed it. It was very grand and it appealed to the
Speaker 4: sci fi kid in me.
Speaker 1: Some cable was meant to show what a different future
Speaker 1: could look like, one where Australia could export massive amounts
Speaker 1: of renewable power. But now that future is being overtaken
Speaker 1: by something else entirely as big tech converges on Australia
Speaker 1: to build data centers for AI. There's a fight over
Speaker 1: how to use our renewable energy, and big tech is winning.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to seven Am Today.
Speaker 1: Writer and senior Research associated at the Australia Institute, Katan
Speaker 1: Joshi on how Australia's AI push is colliding with the
Speaker 1: energy transition and what it means for our missions, our
Speaker 1: power grid and the dream of becoming a clean energy exporter.
Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, January twenty seven in the scheme of things.
Speaker 1: How important was this project in terms of becoming an
Speaker 1: exporter of renewable energy?
Speaker 4: This was one of the biggest in Australia for sure.
Speaker 4: There's many different ways that Australia can be seen as
Speaker 4: a clean energy exporter. You can dig up lithium and
Speaker 4: you can ship it to China to have a process
Speaker 4: eventually used in electric vehicles or batteries grid scale battery storage.
Speaker 4: Australia can also export knowledge in the form of people
Speaker 4: who work on solar panels. That so happened quite a
Speaker 4: lot in the past, but this was one of the
Speaker 4: first big projects that I remember hearing about where it
Speaker 4: was literally physically exporting clean energy and in the form
Speaker 4: of a cable that was of a length that was unprecedented.
Speaker 4: It wasn't really a concept that people were familiar with
Speaker 4: or that they considered to be particularly likely. There is
Speaker 4: a lot of skeptics, and I actually think that's quite
Speaker 4: a healthy thing to be skeptical about these sorts of
Speaker 4: megaprojects that have a very different concept to them. But
Speaker 4: at the same time I think that was a good
Speaker 4: thing so the vision of Australia being a country that
Speaker 4: exports energy, but energy that is not produced from fossil fuels.
Speaker 4: This was one of the biggest.
Speaker 1: Tell me about some cables backers and how satifni it
Speaker 1: was at the time to have two Australia's most powerful
Speaker 1: billionaires involved.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's Mike cannon Brooks, one of the co founders
Speaker 4: of Atlasian and heavily involved in the clean energy spased
Speaker 4: in Australia as a funder an investor. And Andrew Forrest,
Speaker 4: the mining magnet currently with ford Eskew. And Andrew Forrest
Speaker 4: has been heavily backing the idea of hydrogen as a
Speaker 4: clean energy fuel, and ford Eskew has been making a
Speaker 4: bunch of major investments in that regard. Both of them
Speaker 4: have a very different approach. It was reported that Forrest
Speaker 4: was really much more interested in using the solar power
Speaker 4: to produce hydrogen and then ship that hydrogen overseas and
Speaker 4: that's how the export of clean energy happens, whereas canon
Speaker 4: Brooks really wanted to focus on the original plan to
Speaker 4: basically build a giant submarine electricity cable connecting northern Australia
Speaker 4: up to Southeast Asia, and it was this tension that
Speaker 4: played a role in the eventual falling out of those
Speaker 4: two billionaires behind this project, and Canon Brooks eventually won out.
Speaker 1: But then towards the end of last year, the company
Speaker 1: announced that that priority of exporting clean energy had changed
Speaker 1: that would focus more now on Australia. So why is
Speaker 1: that that's correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this was recently announced that they sort of
Speaker 4: maintained that their long term focus is on export of
Speaker 4: clean energy, but in the short term they'll be focusing
Speaker 4: on providing clean electricity to data center facilities, which is
Speaker 4: large warehouses full of computers. People mostly know them for
Speaker 4: doing things like running video calls or storing files, but
Speaker 4: more recently they've been growing in their applications for artificial
Speaker 4: intelligence and machine learning. This is the predominant mode of
Speaker 4: growth for data centers. So if you're seeing a new one,
Speaker 4: it's probably something to do with AI, and specifically the
Speaker 4: type of artificial intelligence that generates information so text, images,
Speaker 4: and videos. That is something that is quite new in Australia.
Speaker 4: Australia is actually the second largest jurisdiction in the world
Speaker 4: for planned data centers. I think people don't quite nervous,
Speaker 4: not just in terms of the amount of dollar value
Speaker 4: for investment, but just even just in terms of raw capacity,
Speaker 4: which is measured in the power consumption in gigawatts. There
Speaker 4: hasn't been a new industry of this level of electricity
Speaker 4: consumption for quite some time.
Speaker 1: Coming up how the race to build data centers threatens
Speaker 1: our climate goals.
Speaker 2: Today we'll be launching Australia's National Artificial Intelligence Plan. It
Speaker 2: is directed towards three national interest priorities.
Speaker 1: Firstly, making sure that katan. Our leaders have been talking
Speaker 1: a lot about Australia becoming an AI hub and part
Speaker 1: of that is welcoming big investment in data centers. So
Speaker 1: tell me more about the scale the government and the
Speaker 1: industry has in mind. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The National AI Plan, I think, focuses on a duller
Speaker 4: value of one hundred billion for data center investment in
Speaker 4: Australia and that really is globally significant.
Speaker 2: Making sure that we're making AI technology here as well
Speaker 2: as taking the best of artificial intelligence technology into Australia
Speaker 2: to do important national interest things.
Speaker 4: This is a trend we're seeing around the world. I'm
Speaker 4: based in Norway and the EU has been making similar
Speaker 4: noises talking about actively trying to attract investment around artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4: The government's AI plan really focused on productivity and the
Speaker 4: potential gains for the economy, and having read that plan,
Speaker 4: I think that it ignored some of the major potential
Speaker 4: downsides of that level of data center growth in such
Speaker 4: a short period of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell me about some of those downsides.
Speaker 4: There was a new report that came out from Australia
Speaker 4: Clean Energy Finance Corporation that examined both the upside and
Speaker 4: the downside of data center development, and it's really important
Speaker 4: because it shows that the potential upside, that is, if
Speaker 4: the data centers pay for renewable energy to cover basically
Speaker 4: all of their operations, the upside for emissions is not
Speaker 4: really that great. It's only a couple of percent reduction
Speaker 4: in emissions thanks to data center growth. But the downside
Speaker 4: if data centers basically fail to bring sufficient renewable energy
Speaker 4: as they grow, and they grow much faster than projected,
Speaker 4: the downside is fifteen eighteen percent emissions increase for the
Speaker 4: power sector in Australia. So there's not a lot of
Speaker 4: emissions reductions potential, but there is a lot of potential emissions.
Speaker 1: Worsening how much electricity will I require? And just as importantly,
Speaker 1: what is that going to mean for our power grid?
Speaker 4: If you look at it as a sort of percentage
Speaker 4: change in the potential future total electricity consumption of all
Speaker 4: of Australia's grids, it's roughly on par with maybe sort
Speaker 4: of three to four percent that kind of range, And
Speaker 4: it can sound small, but it's important to put it
Speaker 4: in the context of the energy transition that's occurring at
Speaker 4: the same time. That energy transition is occurring within those
Speaker 4: small percentage changes, right, So what happens is when you
Speaker 4: have a large number of new electric vehicles, for instance,
Speaker 4: competing for space on the power grid because they need
Speaker 4: to be charged. When you have new manufacturing facilities that
Speaker 4: are coming online making parts for clean energy, for instance,
Speaker 4: all of these different things are actually competing for space
Speaker 4: on the power grid. And it's in that small percentage
Speaker 4: that all of these things jostle for connection rights to
Speaker 4: the grid or cheap access to electricity. And so that
Speaker 4: is why even though the level of change is around
Speaker 4: the same as we have for electric vehicles and electrification,
Speaker 4: it's still quite significant and has a significant impact because
Speaker 4: the addition of those new data centers. The power grid
Speaker 4: also incentivizes increased generation from coal and gas to the
Speaker 4: extent where you can actually end up with coalfid power
Speaker 4: stations in particular seeking justification to extend their lifespan thanks
Speaker 4: to projections of increased power demand in the future, and
Speaker 4: it's a real threat to climate goals. It was quite
Speaker 4: remarkable to see Australia's Climate Change Authority mention data center
Speaker 4: growth specifically as a reason why their initial suggestions of
Speaker 4: a stronger twenty thirty five climate target were kind of
Speaker 4: weakened down to a sixty two percent reduction from two
Speaker 4: thousand and five levels by twenty thirty five. So they
Speaker 4: actually suggested that there would be fewer emissions reductions available
Speaker 4: to Australia thanks to data center growth, and I think
Speaker 4: that's significant. It doesn't mean that data centers were a
Speaker 4: whole story as to why these suggestions shifted, but the
Speaker 4: fact that it's become a factor that is big enough
Speaker 4: to mention in a report like that suggests that something
Speaker 4: big is changing.
Speaker 1: The government says these data centers are critical infrastructure and
Speaker 1: that this industry is important for our modern economy. So
Speaker 1: is it possible to get those benefits without blowing out
Speaker 1: the energy transition.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely for sure. And so there's a few different
Speaker 4: things you can do. First of all, you can mandate
Speaker 4: what's known as high quality renewable energy for curement. That's
Speaker 4: an awful word, salad, I'm sorry, but just to explain it,
Speaker 4: it means. It means forcing the companies that are building
Speaker 4: data centers to make sure that they are well and
Speaker 4: truly funding, at the very least the same amount of
Speaker 4: new power demand that they create with the same amount
Speaker 4: of renewable energy, so not like a small fraction of it,
Speaker 4: but the same amount and if not more. That's the
Speaker 4: basic first step. And then the next step, of course,
Speaker 4: is to actually try and ensure that the growth of
Speaker 4: power demand is itself limited or controlled or justified. This
Speaker 4: is much thornier and it's something that societies haven't really
Speaker 4: tackled with because data centers are not clear about the
Speaker 4: purpose that they serve. You can build a data center
Speaker 4: that helps the hospital run its computers, but you can
Speaker 4: also build a data center that creates a billion sloppy
Speaker 4: images of awful things on social media, right, and so
Speaker 4: it's unclear what's doing what, and so the level of
Speaker 4: social usefulness comes into this is it's a really important thing.
Speaker 1: I think I saw a billion of those sloppy images
Speaker 1: in my Instagram feed this morning. Yeah, good time. Given
Speaker 1: the government is making these huge bet on data centers,
Speaker 1: does that mean that the dream of us becoming a
Speaker 1: major exporter of renewables is now dead?
Speaker 4: No, not necessarily. It's just a question of what we
Speaker 4: want to use our resources for. You could argue that
Speaker 4: Australia becoming a major data center hub for the world
Speaker 4: is a form of renewable energy export. It's just the
Speaker 4: manufacture of data rather than the manufacturer of steel, because
Speaker 4: data is of course sent overseas. But I think that's
Speaker 4: a weak argument because again when you look at the
Speaker 4: systemic effects, what we see around the world where data
Speaker 4: center growth is the fastest is that fossil fuels end
Speaker 4: up being incentivized. And so it really comes down to
Speaker 4: a question not so much of dreams of export or
Speaker 4: what we do about our position in the world in
Speaker 4: terms of energy, but what we do with domestic choices,
Speaker 4: what we do with domestic energy. These are really really
Speaker 4: thorny questions and I think it's actually nice to see
Speaker 4: them now being asked. Thanks to the creation of such
Speaker 4: a new and sudden industry that consumes a lot of
Speaker 4: electrical energy. Australia owns its resources of the solar power
Speaker 4: that falls upon its surface or the wind that blows
Speaker 4: across its surface, and these are questions about what to
Speaker 4: do with resources, just as Australia face those same questions
Speaker 4: when it discovered vast amounts of in gas. This is
Speaker 4: something that needs to be asked. Is it worthwhile to
Speaker 4: use those resources to help decarbonize Asia or to run
Speaker 4: the creation of a thousand videos. This is really really
Speaker 4: important stuff and I don't want to come across as
Speaker 4: to oppose to data center growth. I just think that
Speaker 4: those questions need to be asked for a healthy and
Speaker 4: democratic conversation to be had, because if the worst case
Speaker 4: does happen, if data center growth goes out of control,
Speaker 4: then the dream of becoming an energy exports superpower is
Speaker 4: well and truly dead, and that would be a bad.
Speaker 1: Outcomes an Thank you so much for speaking with us,
Speaker 1: no worries, thanks for having me. Also in the youth,
Speaker 1: former US President Barack Obama has called the killing of
Speaker 1: a thirty seven year old nurse in Minneapol a heartbreaking
Speaker 1: tragedy and a wake up call to every American. There
Speaker 1: are now growing calls for an investigation into the killing
Speaker 1: of Alex Preddy by federal immigration officers. In a statement,
Speaker 1: the Obamas said ICE agents in Minnesota can not operate
Speaker 1: it in a lawful or accountable way. And thousands of
Speaker 1: people attended Invasion Day rallies across the country yesterday, calling
Speaker 1: to change the date of Australia Day or abolish it
Speaker 1: all together. In Melbourne, more than a thousand people gathered
Speaker 1: at Camp Sovereignty for a dawn service. The event featured speeches, dances,
Speaker 1: and historical accounts of violence against First Nations people. I'm
Speaker 1: Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.