At a glance
Data centres leased by Anthropic in Australia will add new generation and pay the full cost of their grid connections, the company told Parliament's AI committee.
Air cooling that uses no water to cool servers by evaporation is the preferred design for those sites, keeping ongoing water use "minimal", the company said.
The Business Council of Australia wants connecting data centres to pay for the grid work they trigger, and asked that gas stay available as backup supply.
One national framework for data centres, with faster decisions for projects that meet it, is the council's seventh recommendation.
Training Anthropic's Claude models in Australia still waits on copyright, where the company proposes a narrow "conditional approval" rather than an exemption.
Anthropic has told Parliament that the data centres it leases in Australia will add new generation and pay the full cost of connecting to the grid. The pledges cover a build-out that includes a lease at Western Downs in Queensland and a tender for at least 1.4GW of capacity.
The company made them in its submission to the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, one of 331 the committee has published. The Business Council of Australia, which represents the chief executives of large Australian companies, proposed in its own submission that connecting data centres pay for the grid work they trigger, and that gas stay available as backup. The Australian Financial Review reported both on 22 September 2026 and led with copyright.
Anthropic has pledged to pay the full cost of its own grid connections, and the Business Council wants all connecting data centres required to pay the attributable costs of theirs under one national framework. The committee was set up on 20 August 2026 and reports by 30 November.
Leased sites to add new generation and pay full grid costs
"We will follow the Data Centre expectations and National Standards, including adding new generation for data centres that we lease," Anthropic said in submission 305. It prefers to match that generation with long-term power purchase agreements for wind, solar and storage projects.
Its Australian projects will "bear the full cost of connecting to the grid, including any network upgrades required for the project, so those costs are not passed on to other Australian electricity users", the company said, matching a commitment it has made in the US. Its preferred design uses closed-loop, air-cooled systems that do not evaporate water to cool servers.
National Cabinet agreed on 26 August 2026 that the Commonwealth would work with the states and territories on consistent mandatory standards for data centre energy, water and land use. The statement said the government "intends to legislate the AI standards in early 2027".
The submission cites Singapore developer Zerra DC's Western Downs Digital Park, beside the Braemar substation about 250km west of Brisbane, as "an indication of the types of investment that we will be making over the coming years". The company prefers to build in "regional, rural and remote Australia". Model training takes months and can be done anywhere, it said, and AI agents that work for hours at a time depend less on being close to customers.
The site is in a Special Industry Area away from residential communities, the company said. Anthropic is hiring its first Australian community engagement manager, and Zerra is in talks with Western Downs Regional Council on a community benefit agreement.
Business Council proposes one national rulebook
The council's seventh recommendation calls for a single national framework aligning Commonwealth, state and territory rules for data centres and the energy, water and connectivity infrastructure behind them.
Under that framework, connecting data centres would pay "the efficient, incremental and independently attributable costs of their connection and any upstream network augmentation they trigger", subject to regulatory oversight.
The council also wants data centres free to use gas for firming, the backup supply that covers gaps in wind and solar output. Energy settings should support new renewable generation "while preserving flexibility for data centres to use an efficient and commercially workable mix of renewable energy, storage and firming, including gas where required", it said.
A National Cabinet communique reported by the trade publication The Energy on 26 August 2026 said large data centres would be required to bring forward new renewable generation "with appropriate firming through gas, batteries or hydro". Queensland dissented from the energy ministers' communique in July, and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has said Canberra will legislate the rules without its agreement.
Both submissions seek faster approvals
Access to energy "and the speed of associated planning approval processes" are the main constraints on compute, according to Anthropic. The council wants data centres that meet the national standard to receive "expedited decisions, coordinated infrastructure planning and regulatory certainty", and governments to "avoid moratoria, capacity caps and retrospective rules".
Sustainability reporting would rest on metered energy, water and emissions data once a site is running, rather than planned or projected use, under the council's model. Smaller facilities would face lighter requirements. Site-level data would go confidentially to regulators, utilities and government where required, with information published at portfolio or aggregate level.
"A fragmented approach across jurisdictions would add cost and complexity and weaken investment certainty," the council said. Local councils made their own cases in submissions to the Senate's separate inquiry into AI and data centres. Gold Coast asked for the federal expectations to be strengthened with minimum water and energy performance standards, and Townsville asked for coordination.
Training investment hinges on copyright
The Financial Review has reported that Western Downs is expected to run Claude for users rather than train it. The company has tied any training in Australia to copyright.
A Treasury brief released under freedom of information in July recorded Anthropic telling the government its investment in model development and associated infrastructure was contingent on clarity of copyright settings. The brief said Anthropic sought certainty over its liability to rights holders, not an exemption, although an exemption featured in earlier reports of the talks. The government ruled out a text and data mining exception, which would let developers train on copyright material without permission, in October 2025.
"Anthropic accepts that broad exceptions from copyright, such as a text and data mining exception, have not received widespread support and have been ruled out by the Government," the submission said.
In its place, the submission proposes "a narrow form of conditional approval": targeted approval to train on material that could be subject to copyright in Australia, if the developer meets set conditions. Those could include respecting and verifying "do not crawl" signals such as robots.txt, and meeting the proposed AI standards. Anthropic is open to considering investment or other conditions "designed to support the future of Australian creators and cultural endeavours".
On copyright, the council backs an opt-out model, under which developers could train on lawfully accessed material unless the rights holder signals otherwise.
Training frontier models in Australia would open opportunities for expatriate researchers at labs including Anthropic to return home, the company said, calling it "the fastest way to build Australia's high-end AI talent pool". Domestic compute for training and for running models would also make Australia more resilient to disruption of internet connectivity or telecommunications networks, it said.
What to watch
The committee's report. Due by 30 November 2026, it will show whether the committee backs conditional approval, an opt-out model or neither.
The national standards. The Commonwealth and the states are still to settle the energy, water and land-use standards, including how firming is treated.
Western Downs capacity. Neither a capacity figure for Anthropic's share of Zerra's planned 1.44GW campus nor a power supplier has been reported. This publication's September prediction has Queensland's state-owned generators supplying an Anthropic campus.
The rest of the build. Anthropic's chief executive has been reported as wanting to discuss up to 5GW outside Sydney. Whether any of that capacity trains models, at existing data centres in Australia or new regional campuses, turns on copyright, by Anthropic's own account.