Conservation Council seeks ACT data centre pause, $200m Beard site

The council is focused on a second CDC data centre at Beard, near Canberra Airport, which the ABC says received conditional approval in September. Copland said stage one at Beard was forecast to draw 5 per cent of the ACT’s peak energy, and the second centre would take twice that share.

Water is a second concern. The ABC says the council wants facilities sited where supply is secure, and wants closed-loop cooling because it needs less water.

The numbers

The ABC describes the proposed Beard centre as a three-storey, $200m building with 12 data halls, beside CDC’s existing site there. The existing centre has a planned total capacity of 40MW.

According to the ABC, the application went in one week before the ACT Government pledged a data centre framework covering where such facilities can sit, what standards apply and how proposals get assessed.

What’s next

The ABC reports the ACT Greens and other community groups have also asked for a moratorium. In August, Chief Minister Andrew Barr rejected the idea, pointing to the planning, environmental, utility and regulatory requirements already in place, per the ABC. Both the federal and ACT governments are developing new standards for large data centres.

CDC chief executive Greg Boorer told the ABC that after 20 years operating in Canberra, no one had complained about its facilities, and that the company already cools in a closed loop. He said the sector needs suitable locations and should talk to communities sooner, so residents do not discover a project through a planning portal.

Federal pressure is also building. We earlier covered Senator David Pocock’s proposed levy on data centre operators, which the ABC notes he first called for in June.

Source: ABC News, 9 November 2026. Reported by The Australian Developer.