Report
Empowering Australia’s Digital Future with Data Centres
A new report by economics consultancy Mandala unpacks the essential role and contribution of data centres in Australia.
Key findings of the Empowering Australia’s Digital Future research report are:
- Data centres are essential – Data centres enable our modern digital lives and the Australian digital economy, empowering innovation, jobs, essential services and the clean energy transition.
- Data centre investment is growing – Data centre growth in Australia will see an additional $26 billion in investment over the next 5 years.
- Data centres need skilled workers – To enable this growth, Australia’s data centre workforce needs to double by 2030. With their essential role in our digital economy, data centres underpin 935,000 Australian tech jobs.
- Data centres are energy efficient – Data centres aggregate the compute processing and energy demands of digital services used by business, government and the broader community. By centralising this demand, data centres save around 2 terawatt hours of power that would otherwise be consumed by on-premise servers, using 67% less energy.
- Data centres are catalysing the energy transition – With a commitment to matching their power use with 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030, major data centre operators and their customers are catalysing the energy transition through renewable power purchase agreements.
The report was commissioned by five of Australia’s largest data centre operators – AirTrunk, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, and NEXTDC – to highlight opportunities to enhance skills development, planning processes and renewable energy growth.
