Shafaqna English– Chris Bowen, Australia’s energy minister, said on Wednesday(5 Aug 2026) that the Northern Territory’s plan to tap into its abundant shale gas resources to run data centers would go against the proposed national regulations. This has created uncertainty about whether the Territory can successfully attract large-scale tech investments worth billions of dollars.
Under a recently proposed policy from Canberra, data centers are now required to develop their own new renewable energy sources instead of drawing electricity from the existing power grid. However, both Queensland and the Northern Territory have expressed their support for using gas-fired power generation to meet the energy needs of data centers.
Source: Reuters