How will datacentres affect Australia’s power prices, water supply and emissions?

There are 260 datacentres operating in Australia – mostly in Sydney and Melbourne – and dozens more in the offing. Photograph: Steven Markham/AAP

Our online lives are increasingly reliant on digital data, whether it’s asking an AI chatbot a question, generating a video or transcribing an online meeting.

Datacentres – giant warehouses stacked with servers to process and store all that data – have been around for decades. But what’s changing is the rapid pace and scale of industry growth, fuelled by the uptake of artificial intelligence.