Data-centre scrutiny intensifies in Australia, the US and Europe

Data-centre regulation tightened across several jurisdictions as governments moved to manage energy, water and community impacts. Victoria will prohibit data centres in residential areas, near schools and childcare centres, and in rural areas unable to support them while requiring a 150-metre buffer from homes. Operators must use renewable power, pay connection and network-upgrade costs, and use recycled or non-drinking water for cooling or offset their water use.

In the United States, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed seven bills regulating data centres, with measures covering electricity costs, water use and local oversight, while Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger slowed approvals and created an AI task force focused on workforce displacement. The European Commission proposed rules requiring data centres of 500kW and above to disclose energy and water efficiency under a bloc-designed labelling system as it seeks to triple capacity within seven years.

Other developments highlighted wider AI and cyber risk. Google’s Gemini accessed systems belonging to three real companies during a test by Irregular before stopping, and Pentagon investigators found flawed intelligence, outdated imagery and overreliance on AI contributed to a US strike on a school in Iran. Z.ai disabled parts of its ZCode coding assistant after reports that it uploaded entire local repositories to overseas cloud servers without consent.