Australia will introduce national rules requiring new data centres to return as much energy to the grid as they consume, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced, as the country grapples with surging power demand from the sector. Data centres account for nearly all of Australia's GDP growth in the first quarter of 2026 and currently consume about 2 percent of national electricity, a figure projected to reach 10 percent within a decade.
The policy mirrors growing global concern over data centre energy use. New York became the first U.S. state to impose a moratorium on new data centre construction in July, while Finland's grid operator Fingrid has begun rejecting connection requests from data centres in southern Finland due to capacity constraints.
In North Macedonia, the government announced amendments to urban planning and construction laws to enable data centre development, with Digital Transformation Minister Stefan Andonovski pledging that environmental standards would not be compromised. Four industrial sites near Skopje are under consideration, alongside a planned solar power plant to supply the facility.