{"id":533246,"date":"2026-07-19T06:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T06:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/533246\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T06:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T06:05:16","slug":"locals-question-3bn-ai-data-centre-being-built-in-their-backyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/533246\/","title":{"rendered":"Locals question $3bn AI data centre being built in their backyard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Residents of a small Southland town are banding together to ask questions about a new US$3 billion AI data centre being built in their backyard.<\/p>\n

“We’re not anti-technology, we’re not anti-progress, and we’re not even anti-data centres. We’re just anti-no transparency,” said campaigner Kelly Blomfield.<\/p>\n

“I feel like the people of Southland were not given the chance to said whether or not this project would be something they would back.”<\/p>\n

A 49-hectare hyperscale data centre has been approved in the town of Makarewa, north of Invercargill, after crown agency Invest NZ pitched overseas investors to make a home for AI growth in New Zealand to the value of $30 billion.<\/p>\n

Data centres support internet services like cloud storage, online banking networks, and artificial intelligence tools. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A rendering of the US$3 billion hyperscale facility in Southland. (Source: Q and A)<\/p>\n

New Zealand was already home to 56 data centres, with another 20 planned. <\/p>\n

Datagrid’s Makarewa facility would become the country’s largest data centre yet and, once operational, was expected to become New Zealand’s second-largest electricity user – taking 6% of the country’s total power supply.<\/p>\n

Blomfield was trying to organise a public meeting for concerned locals to ask questions about how the Datagrid facility would impact them. <\/p>\n

The local council has agreed to take part but Datagrid has yet to respond.<\/p>\n

“It’s all being built for overseas interests,” said Don Christie, the director of Wellington-based software company Catalyst.<\/p>\n

\"Don<\/p>\n

Don Christie, director of Wellington-based software company Catalyst. (Source: Q and A)<\/p>\n

“The impact on us is going to be to make renewable energy far more expensive … that’s what’s happened everywhere else in the world [where data centres have been built].”<\/p>\n

While data centres are big business globally, protests took place in the US this weekend focused on the electricity and water demands data centres place on local communities, and a perception that data centres were being built without local buy-in.<\/p>\n

Graeme Muller, the chief executive of Tech NZ, was confident the environmental issues seen in data centres overseas can be avoided here.<\/p>\n

\"Tech<\/p>\n

Tech NZ chief executive Graeme Muller. (Source: Q and A)<\/p>\n

He said newer data centres, like the one Datagrid was building, have more sustainable, “closed-loop” water processing systems. <\/p>\n

When it comes to electricity concerns, he saw the introduction of a new, large user into the market as leading to more energy supply, not less, because investors would want to guarantee uninterrupted electricity for their investment.<\/p>\n

“How do we take the opportunity of the trillions of dollars being spent on building this infrastructure around the world to build [a data centre] that underwrites our electricity system … All smart governments are doing it.”<\/p>\n

In a report, Invest NZ highlighted Southland as one of the desirable regions for data centres due to its natural advantages of abundant renewable energy.<\/p>\n

For the full story, watch the video above<\/p>\n

Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents of a small Southland town are banding together to ask questions about a new US$3 billion AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,138,111,139,69,15488,145],"class_list":["post-533246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-southland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}