Why are ‘we’ building all these data centres again

Billy Lee Kok Chi presents on data centre trends, myths, and sustainability challenges during APRICOT 2025.

An article in The Conversation makes the case that governments have a role to play in making sure that data centre build-outs serve the public interest and operate with a strong social licence.

The article is set against the Australian Federal Government's strategic planning direction, which requires new data centres to demonstrably serve the national interest. While such facilities can generate employment and build domestic capability, they also compete with other sectors for constrained resources, including electricity, water, land, labour, and capital.

Globally, announcements of data centre buildouts have increased and accelerated with investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Building DCs today could lead to future revenue from data centre tenancies in the future, especially from large corporations. Additionally, hyperscale cloud providers are building data centres directly to position services closer to the users of those services.

Rising construction costs and constraints in key services, especially electricity supply, are creating bottlenecks for data centre development. In uncertain conditions, this can encourage speculative 'build now or fall behind' investment, increasing the risk of overbuilt and underused infrastructure. In the worst case, it can tie up water, power, and land that are badly needed elsewhere in society.

At the same time, knowledge sector workers, software developers in particular, have been subject to widespread layoffs, as companies try (with uncertain results) to use AI-based models to find efficiencies and reduce staffing costs. Beyond the human impact, this raises concerns about system resilience and the ability of economies to absorb new workforce entrants.

It is worth asking who will buy goods and services if unemployment increases substantially. If a data centre that replaces 1,000 jobs was built by 100 people, and can be run by 10 people, is that really an improvement from a societal perspective?

Data centre construction was a major focus at APRICOT 2025 in Bangkok, from the panel "Staying ahead with Artificial Intelligence data centres " to CSF Advisers Chairman Billy Lee Kok Chi's talk on "Designing AI-optimized data centres - trends, myths, and sustainability challenges". These discussions reflect broader concerns about the societal costs of large-scale compute infrastructure, including trade-offs and unintended consequences. While the article in The Conversation highlights the Australian context, the questions it raises - about whether rapidly building massive digital service hubs truly serves the public interest - are relevant worldwide.

The views expressed by the authors of this blog are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of APNIC. Please note a Code of Conduct applies to this blog.