Ryan Stokes says government plan to power data centres with renewables ‘defies logic’ - The Australian

Ryan Stokes, chief executive of Seven West Media, told a business forum that the government's plan to power data centres with renewable energy alone is impractical. He argued the approach lacks grid stability and described it as defying logic for a sector that demands consistent, high-capacity power delivery.

Where this fits

This is a reliability problem made visible. Data centres are not weather-dependent industries; they need firm, dispatchable power round the clock. A renewables-only supply for such loads demands either massive battery storage (itself dependent on China-sourced cells and minerals) or heavy reliance on gas peaking plants to fill gaps when wind and sun don't deliver. The government's renewable-only ambition sidesteps the whole-system cost: firming capacity, transmission overbuild, and supply-chain exposure. Nuclear, firm, energy-dense, low-material, and domestically controllable, is the alternative being foregone by law, not technical merit.

What it means

Australia is betting its data-centre economy, a sector of strategic importance in a contested region, on weather-dependent generation backed by gas imports or battery supply chains controlled by Beijing. A data-centre operator needs certainty of supply; a grid that can only promise renewables plus gas or storage is a grid held together by expensive workarounds. The honest question is not whether renewables can technically power data centres, they can, with enough firming, but whether Australia wants to pay that cost and accept that dependency when a low-emission firm alternative exists and is prohibited by law.