{"id":728950,"date":"2026-08-06T03:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T03:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/728950\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T03:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T03:56:11","slug":"chris-bowen-vows-to-override-queensland-and-nt-to-force-renewables-powered-ai-datacentres-datacentres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/728950\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Bowen vows to override Queensland and NT to force renewables-powered AI datacentres | Datacentres"},"content":{"rendered":"

The energy minister, Chris Bowen<\/a>, says the federal government will override state governments that oppose new national rules on datacentres, with commonwealth legislation forcing new AI datacentres to be powered by renewable energy and banning those fuelled by gas.<\/p>\n

Bowen said he expected his counterparts in Queensland and the Northern Territory \u2013 who had protested against the new federal rules at a meeting last week<\/a> \u2013 to be unhappy with the move, but said the Albanese government was committed to powering the AI revolution with renewable energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will legislate as a commonwealth. The constitution is clear about the power of commonwealth legislation. I respectfully disagree with Queensland and the Northern Territory,\u201d Bowen told the National Press Club on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The Australian Energy<\/a> Market Commission warned that without rule changes such as those proposed by Bowen, the costs of bringing large datacentres online \u201cwill be paid for in part by customers\u201d rather than big tech companies.<\/p>\n

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, last month pledged to legislate<\/a> binding standards for AI datacentres, including on locations and energy use, with new national rules requiring them to rely on new renewable energy, minimise water use and maximise energy efficiency, pay for their grid connection costs and \u201cput at least as much energy into our grid as they take out of it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Queensland and the NT last week opposed the changes in a meeting of state and federal energy ministers, despite all other states backing the plan. Queensland\u2019s David Janetzki called the federal proposal \u201cunderdeveloped ideas that hand increased power to Canberra\u201d.<\/p>\n

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The NT has proposed a major datacentre powered by gas<\/a> from the controversial Beetaloo basin development.<\/p>\n

But Bowen on Wednesday confirmed federal legislation would mandate the rules set out by Albanese. He said while gas had a \u201crole to play\u201d in firming up datacentre power use, \u201cif a datacentre is proposed to only use gas, it will not meet the national minimum standards and it will not be allowed to register and will not be able to proceed\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I always prefer to work with my state and territory colleagues, the commonwealth will not be standing by and letting a race to the bottom of states falling over themselves to attract datacentres, at the cost to household bills, reliability or emissions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will use all the powers available to the commonwealth, including commonwealth legislation, to ensure that Australian households and Australian energy reliability is put first: even if some states have different ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NT government was contacted for comment. Janetzki said his government \u201clook forward to discussing\u201d the issue at an upcoming national cabinet meeting on AI, but said his state \u201cwill not force uneconomic investment into the system\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a Q&A session after his speech, Bowen disputed the characterisation that Canberra would \u201cforce\u201d states to comply, but stated that federal laws would override states.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ll engage in our levers. The clearest one is obviously commonwealth legislation. We\u2019re going down that road.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bowen said that while Albanese would soon confirm details of the federal legislation, new datacentres would have to prove the source of their renewables, how much power they were offsetting, that they would have backup power and that they would be \u201cflexible\u201d with use at peak times to stabilise the grid.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the AEMC, the national body for the power grid, advised that datacentres should have to show renewables certificates. The AEMC said this was to ensure \u201ctheir connection doesn\u2019t tip the supply-demand balance and push up wholesale prices for everyone else\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDatacentre growth does not have to come at a cost to other consumers, but that depends on getting the settings right from the start,\u201d the AEMC chair, Anna Collyer, said. \u201cOur starting point is simple, this growth must not leave other consumers worse off.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AEMC said power operator Transgrid had seen \u201can unprecedented increase\u201d in new connection requests in western Sydney, with about 8 gigawatts about to be connected to the grid \u2013 \u201con par with the entire average daily demand for NSW\u201d.<\/p>\n

The AEMC warned that, without changes to energy rules, grid connection costs for datacentres would be felt \u201cacross the consumer base at no clear consumer benefit\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The energy minister, Chris Bowen, says the federal government will override state governments that oppose new national rules…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-728950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}