The data centre boom will mean more energy and water use. The real question is how the energy is produced – and where the water comes from.
- Honorary Associate Professor, Australian National University
As data centres have grown in size and number in Australia, they have also become the subject of fierce public debate. So what’s the best way forward?
Don’t panic about AI data centres and water – it’s energy we should worry about
A healthy economy relies on healthy natural systems. But at the economic roundtable, this fact was all but absent.
Australia cannot get its environmental act together. We don’t even have the information we need to fix environmental problems. But there is a better way.
Australia’s first ‘land account’ is a great example of the nation’s environmental policy culture: we develop or adopt good ideas, but then tinker with, or even discard them.
At an international summit in Egypt this month, nations will hopefully make progress towards recognising the economic value of wildlife and other environmental assets.
Water and energy use are becoming more efficient, which is good news for both the economy and the environment. But Australia has yet to realise the value of national environmental accounting.
Is Australia undervaluing its most valuable natural asset by only charging $6.50 a day to visit the Great Barrier Reef? And would it help if tourists were asked to pay more?
How do you determine the financial benefit of cutting a tree down, versus leaving it standing? Environmental accounting offers some insight.
We count unemployment and economic indicators in the budget, so why not environmental ones?
The health of our environment is not included in national accounts data. And we are all poorer for it.
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