Empowering Australia’s Digital Future Research Report

A new report by economics consultancy Mandala unpacks the essential role and contribution of data centres in Australia, with some powerful findings.

The Empowering Australia’s Digital Future research report confirmed:

  1. Data centres are essential – enabling our modern digital lives and the Australian digital economy by empowering innovation, jobs, essential services and the clean energy transition.
  2. Data centre investment is growing – bringing an additional $26 billion in investment over the next 5 years.
  3. Data centres need skilled workers – with Australia’s data centre workforce needing to double by 2030 to meet this growth.
  4. Data centres are energy efficient – by aggregating the compute processing and energy demands of digital services, they use around 67% less energy compared to on-premise servers.
  5. Data centres are catalysing the energy transition – with major operators committing to matching power use with 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030, through renewable power purchase agreements.

Read the full report findings here.

The report was commissioned by five of Australia’s largest data centre operators – AirTrunk, Amazon Web Services (AWS), CDC, Microsoft, and NEXTDC.