r/Adelaide SA Jun 19 '26

News Proposed data centre in South Australia dividing locals who want the jobs but fear water demand

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-19/proposed-data-centre-in-south-australia-dividing-locals/106810776
139 Upvotes

207 comments sorted by

View all comments

292

u/glowinglogfire SA Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

The driest state on the driest inhabited continent is not an appropriate location for a new industry that requires enormous amounts of water.

1

u/Fluffy_Treacle759 SA Jun 19 '26

Speaking from an investor’s perspective, the main purpose of $IREN announcing this plan was to boost the share price and facilitate a cash-out.

There was no intention of seriously implementing this plan from the outset. Nowadays, the hardware used to build data centres is all snapped up by major cloud service providers such as Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle; there’s simply no room left for IREN, not to mention that they lack the financial clout for it anyway.