Protests called as data centre developer super-sizes plans for fossil gas generation in Southern Highlands

Local outrage is growing in the New South Wales southern highlands region over news that a group of companies developing a large data centre have south to supersize their plans for gas generation, now more than 20 times bigger than their first proposals.

An opaque group of companies is seeking to build a combined 703 megawatt (MW) gas plant to power a data centre in New South Wales’ (NSW) southern highlands.

Cloud Carrier, and two related companies, has already secured hard-won council planning permission for a 14 MW gas power unit, and is currently fighting a “deemed refusal” for another 16 MW gas power station in the NSW Land and Environment Court. 

Now it is seeking to build a massive 673 MW fossil gas generator, far higher than the capacity envisaged when reported by Renew Economy last year.

The three combined gas units make the Moss Vale proposal the third largest gas plant proposed in Australia, according to RenewMap, behind only gigawatt-scale plans for Gladstone by Quinbrook and by EnergyAustralia for Marulan, which is just 33km to the west of Moss Vale.

The massive proposal is spurring calls for an on-site protest among Moss Vale and Wingecarribee shire locals during a Land and Environment Court conciliation visit on Friday over the 16 MW plant.

A satellite image of the Moss Vale site. Cloud Carrier plans to put the 673 MW gas power station in the top right section of the site. Image: DPHI SEARS request

Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) investigator, and Wingecarribee resident, Kim Garratt, says the community doesn’t want more fossil fuel use, noting that the Wingecarribee council declaring a climate emergency in 2018 and in 2021 stopping a new coal mine on the same spot as the data centre.

“If Cloud Carrier wants to build its big data centre it should be compelled to build the renewables and water recycling infrastructure to service it,” she says.

“Data centres with their huge energy use must not be allowed to derail Australia’s clean energy transition.”

And yet, Cloud Carrier’s plan to install a massive gas power station to handle its energy needs is not out of line with the new federal principles asking that data centres bring their own clean energy or storage, but not making it a legal requirement.

The companies behind the data centre proposal say they also want to build an 80 MW battery of unknown duration. 

Complicated history

Little about the Moss Vale data centre proposal is simple, from the corporate structure to the planning process.

The project is owned or otherwise run by Cloud Carrier and two companies with little more than Australian Business Register footprints — Square Energy and Nakar Property (or Naker Property, as it’s also referred to twice in the report submitted to the state planning process).

The gas side of the project has never had council support. 

A deemed refusal by Wingecarribee shire council for the smaller 14 MW gas plant was overturned by the Land and Environment Court in 2024, after Nakar Property appealed.

“Deemed refusal” is a legal mechanism where planning permission is refused because a council doesn’t make a decision within a mandated period of time. 

A planning application was lodged last year with the council for the 16 MW gas plant and 80 MW battery, only for the gas permit to also receive a deemed refusal.

Nakar Properties took the council back to the Land and Environment Court and it’s this case that is being heard this week. 

What the council does not have authority over is the massive 673 MW proposal, which is so large it’s a state significant project and in the hands of planning bureaucrats at the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI).

Data centres are gas hungry

Gas is already the preferred energy source for data centres around the world. 

In the UK, more than 100 data centres have requests in to burn the gas for 15 terawatt hours a year of power supply, according to reporting in The Guardian. 

In the US, installed gas capacity tripled last year to meet data centre demand, according to a report in January by Global Energy Monitor. 

And thanks to the “or” loophole allowing data centres to pop a battery on site instead of building actual clean generation, it looks like similar moves are afoot in Australia. 

Last week, EnergyAustralia unveiled plans for the 1.43 gigawatt (GW) Marulan gas power plant, which for a long time had been considered dead and buried. 

If approved, that project will be the nation’s biggest ever gas power plant, designed to fill what EnergyAustralia says will be a supply “gap of gigawatts” created by retiring coal and new demand, including from data centres.

EnergyAustralia is seeking to almost double the capacity of a project previously approved for development, according to an EPBC referral.

The Marulan gas-fired power station – which is declared Critical State Significant Infrastructure by the NSW government – was given federal environmental approval for construction on EnergyAustralia-owned land in Brayton all the way back in 2009.

But as solar farms and batteries grew up around, it, the need for a gas plant appeared less and less relevant. 

EnergyAustralia – which already owns and operates gas plants across three states, including Tallawarra A and B in NSW – has named forecast demand growth from data centres as part of the reason for the Marulan expansion.

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