We don’t think too much about AI data centres, despite the occasional headline that they’ll “cook the planet” and should instead be “built in space”.
Deputy Science Editor Drew Rooke was at a 2025 conference when he kept hearing about a plan to build a 1 gigawatt data centre in Sydney, Australia. The massive scale of the centre raised many questions. What would it look like? How much land, water and energy would it use? Could it really be built? Should it be built?
To answer those questions, Editorial Web Developer Matt Garrow and Head of Editorial Innovation Ashlynne McGhee designed an immersive story structure that starts with the personal: what’s the impact of that dancing cat video you just generated on ChatGPT?
Matt sourced satellite images, building plans and permits, and site plans to construct a 3D model of the Mamre Road Data Campus, which sits at the core of the story. It is visually arresting, built in javascript and animated with scroll interactions. The scale – an area the size of 52 rugby fields –and impact – 2.8 million solar panels worth of energy – are clearly articulated.
We enlisted academic Bronwyn Cumbo from the University of Technology Sydney who’s conducted extensive research on data centres to explain the finer details of the proposal and the piece is written under a joint byline with the Digital Storytelling team (Matt, Ashlynne and Drew). Bronwyn helped us understand things like how the centre’s cooling would work and how it would source its power, as well as the broader global context.
Drew worked closely with Bronwyn to write and edit the story, transforming her technical expertise into a compelling narrative for a general audience. Drew fact-checked and sought right of replies from the companies mentioned. Ashlynne oversaw the editorial process.
AI is perhaps the biggest science story in the world right now. This piece helps readers get a sense of the scale of AI hype and what it means for their communities, their drinking water, their power bills and the planet.
