With the growth of AI and data centres across Australia, the ETU has been making sure electricians’ perspectives are heard, fighting for more apprenticeships and greater investment into Australia’s energy infrastructure.
We recently made a submission in response to the Federal Government’s Consultation Paper “Getting it right: Building AI infrastructure that works for Australia”, outlining the standards needed to ensure that the rapid expansion of data centres for AI delivers long-term benefits for workers and communities.
This submission was informed by the ETU’s previous work with various community and environmental organisations to establish public interest principles for the responsible development of data centres.
In July this year, the Prime Minister announced that the government will introduce AI laws, prompting the current consultation process.
The ETU made several recommendations in the submission:
- Recommendation: lower the proposed 30MW/100MW thresholds, consistent with the NSW large load threshold of 15MW, and include anti-avoidance rules such as those that aggregate facilities on a single site and staged expansions.
- Recommendation: the Standards should be applied to all new and existing data centres, with appropriate and proportional transitional arrangements for existing data centres and data centres already in the approvals pipeline.
- Recommendation: mandate 1 apprentice for every 5 workers in the construction phase, with subtargets for 1st and 2nd year apprentices and women, and ongoing apprentice opportunities during the operations phases.
- Recommendation: data centres should be required to contribute to funding the additional training capacity required to meet their additional workforce demand through the payment of a training levy.
- Recommendation: governments should use training levy funds to invest in new training centres, VET teachers, and industry GTOs, with the purpose of creating more opportunities for apprentices.
- Recommendation: data centres should be required to contract new renewable energy to meet at least their stated demand. REGOs should only be used as a compliance mechanism or as part of transitional arrangements, with additional requirements that data centres sign PPAs with new renewable energy projects.
- Recommendation: data centres should be required to contract new renewable energy to meet at least their stated demand. REGOs should only be used as a compliance mechanism or as part of transitional arrangements, with additional requirements including PPAs and ramp-up management used to ensure maximum renewables coverage from the earliest date possible.
- Recommendation: data centres should be required to meet global best practice PUE and WUE, with non-potable or recycled water as the default.
- Recommendation: data centres should be required to meet the costs of network augmentation, with cost recovery determined by the capacity reserved on the network not the capacity used by the data centre.
- Recommendation: introduce robust regulation of frontier AI development, including mandatory disclosure of breaches.
The ETU recognises the enormous opportunities presented by the rapid expansion of data centres that underpin our economy. However, these projects must contribute to the energy system and workforce they rely upon. Read the full submission here: