For some residents it started with a letter in the mailbox. It was a “friendly introduction from the team behind the Victorian AI hub”.

“I am knocking on doors to explain what we have in mind and, most importantly, to listen,” the letter from Syncline Energy stated.

“Construction won’t start for at least two-years while we complete the planning and environmental approvals.”

For others, news of the project had already spread, through social media and news reports which sounded the alarm before the company had begun its communication efforts.

The site for what has been dubbed a mega datacentre in Plumpton, around30km north-west of the Melbourne CBD, is now an empty paddock next to Melbourne’s renewable energy hub, just off the Calder Freeway. It’s near a fast-growing suburb, transmission lines, and a stone’s throw from where Harry Houdini made what was claimed to be Australia’s first controlled powered flight in 1910. Planes from nearby Tullarmarine airport fly low overhead, and on weekends the sky is punctured by the lights and sounds of the Calder speedway.

This paddock is rapidly becoming a microcosm of the growing community resentment to datacentres across Australia.

The proposed site is 350 hectares, of which Syncline says 40% – 140ha, or just under six times the size of Chadstone shopping centre – will be used to house four datacentre buildings with maximum capacity of 2.4GW, with the remaining 60% to be open land. The proposed centre is larger than any currently operating in Australia and would consume more electricity than is generated by Victoria’s largest power station, Loy Yang A.

The sheer scale of the project has alarmed residents before shovels have hit the ground, building on a growing deep discomfort with the explosion in datacentre construction. An April report by lobby group Data Centres Australia said there were 30 datacentres in operation in Victoria, with another 30 in the pipeline.

Environmental impacts, electricity and water use, concerns about the rise of AI more broadly, and the impact of campaigns in the US – which show developments stretching for miles, lit up like an international airport and with a constant hum of white noise and higher power prices – are feeding community concerns.

A petition calling on the state government to “ensure the environmental, cultural, social and infrastructure implications of the proposed Victorian AI Hub are fully assessed and publicly considered,” as well as the cumulative effects of other new datacentres, has amassed over 3,600 signatures. It was started by Molly Walker, who lives over 250km away in the Grampians and first heard about the plans on TikTok.

Walker, who works in conservation, said the scale of the project made her think “enough is enough”.

“How much is being taken away from the environment?” she asked.

“There’s also the noise … I’ve heard a lot about the datacentres in America and how much noise they produce. I did some research and found they’re not much different from the ones here in terms of the impact.”

Other locals feel the western suburbs have become “a dumping ground”.

“They always say they can’t put datacentres out in the east because of the land. The west has these vast lands and because of the socio-demographic areas [of the east] people there are likely to complain,” says Dr Karen Austria.

Austria grew up in the area, and is an electrical engineer by training. She says locals are concerned the industrial development could lead to a drop in house prices.

She also points to the fact the location is within a green wedge, which the state government has said should have its environmental, economic and cultural values protected.

“Why are you putting this in our back yard?” she asks.

“They’re promising to do community consultation … but everyone has got this one letter and they feel like they don’t know enough about it yet and the company needs to communicate more.”

‘Desirable’ scale

Much of the community anger about the wave of datacentres in development has stemmed from a lack of community consultation, and through fast-track approval processes that skip the lengthy council review to go straight to the state government.

The managing director of Syncline Energy, Phil Galloway, says the company is carefully consulting with locals before submitting the planned application for the Plumpton site.

“The process starts with our direct neighbours and works out from there. The conversations will take at least a year,” he says.

Ecological surveys and cultural heritage work is being undertaken parallel to the community discussions, Galloway says, adding that locals need to be shown there will be no noise, heat island, traffic, ecology or pollution, “which means careful engineering, architecture and urban planning”.

“It would be insincere if we submitted a planning permit and then sought that input later,” he says.

Galloway says the large scale of the project is all about building sovereign AI capability, and making efficient use of land, energy and water. The size of the land will allow buffers and green space between the buildings and residents. It’s also almost entirely under the Melbourne airport flight path, which means there are planning restrictions against using it for housing.

The company is promising to use solar, wind and battery storage and provide additional transmission and grid stability. Galloway says it will also create local jobs, a community fund and walking and cycling paths.

“That scale can only be delivered through a major precinct connecting into the main 500kV grid rather than piecemeal smaller datacentres in the suburbs and rural towns,” he says.

“From a network stability point of view, it is desirable to concentrate the datacentre load at a strong point in the grid and install buffering equipment so to stabilise any IT load changes.”

A Facebook group created in opposition to the project has more than 300 members.

The city of Melton is already feeling the heat, and was forced to clarify its role will be limited if the application goes to the state government.

Opposition to the plan has also reached the offices of local federal MPs, with Labor’s Alice Jordan-Baird and Sam Rae releasing a statement earlier this month saying they would write to the Victorian government and Syncline to ask how the project aligns with the federal government expectations on datacentres and AI infrastructure.

“The west cannot simply become the destination for infrastructure that places additional strain on resources while delivering little in return,” the statement read.

Balancing risks

The rapid expansion of datacentres in Australia has experts warnings of a massive impact on the nation’s energy and water supplies.

The NSW Net Zero Commission said this week that the booming number of datacentres “could have ramifications for the electricity sector’s transition”.

A federal parliamentary inquiry into datacentres began in May, and a NSW inquiry is ongoing. There have been calls for a moratorium on new developments until the federal government introduces new rules.

The Australian government’s framework for the energy and water-hungry developments would create a legal obligation for large-scale datacentres to underwrite new power supply, pay their full share of grid connection, and add as much energy to the grid as they take out of it, Albanese said this month.

The new policy will aim to find the balance between growing community concerns, the desire for sovereign AI capability, and the potential for billions in investment – and still get buy in from the states to properly plan for the growth of the sector.

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, told the state parliament in May that Melbourne was the “key destination for datacentre investment”.

The Victorian minister for economic growth, Steve Dimopoulos, later told an economic forum that it was not a question of how many datacentres the state can build but “what kind of Victoria we build around them”.