At a glance
We scored the six locations where Queensland data centres are being proposed against five conditions: land, power, connectivity, water and workforce.
Ipswich is the only one of the six to meet all five, on a Swanbank site CleanCo says is wired for up to 1.2GW, 60km from Brisbane.
Queensland's transmission owner Powerlink counts 110MW of new technology demand in the south, in a report written before the Kogan application was filed.
Kogan's proposal sits 600 metres from a substation, 15km from the nearest piped water, and no carrier has published a route to it.
Townsville City Council owns 2,200 hectares zoned for high impact industry, with the transmission line and the industrial water to serve it both timed to 2032.
A planning adviser named six Queensland locations in August
Queensland has a 1.44GW data centre application in front of a regional council and an argument with Canberra over who writes the energy rules. Which parts of the state can carry an AI data centre campus is being settled one application at a time.
Trent Forrest, a director at the planning consultancy Urbis, put a framework to that question in August 2026. His ten-page paper argues Queensland should decide where it wants concentrations of data centres before proponents start filing, sets out the standard siting test of land, power, connectivity, water and workforce, and names six locations in the state that could carry them, running from the coast to the far north. Each of the six now holds either a live application, an operating data centre or state-controlled industrial land.
Forrest calls the six "illustrative propositions, not site recommendations", so the paper stops short of saying which of them a developer could build on now. We scored all six against his five conditions, counting only what a dated public source already shows.
Ipswich meets all five, and it is the closest of the six to Brisbane. It holds a 336-hectare site wired for up to 1.2GW, a recycled water scheme already delivering to that site, a carrier-neutral exchange 15km away at Springfield Central and a council population of about 233,000, all within 60km of the Brisbane exchanges.
Land, power, connectivity, water and workforce
A condition counts as in place only where a dated public source shows it already exists. The five tests:
Land. A zoned, serviced site of at least 100 hectares, or an application already filed on one. Power. A grid connection of 100MW or more, with the capacity published by the network owner or the site owner. Connectivity. A fibre route open to any telco, with either a published time for data to travel to Brisbane and back, or an operating exchange where networks meet. Water. Supply an industrial user can buy, evidenced by a scheme that is running or a published allocation. Workforce. A university campus in the region and an existing industrial or trades employment base.
Locations are ordered by conditions in place.
Location | Conditions in place | The condition not yet in place |
|---|---|---|
Ipswich and Swanbank | All five | None |
Brisbane to Sunshine Coast | Power, connectivity, workforce | Land |
Gladstone | Land, water, workforce | Power |
Toowoomba | Connectivity, workforce | Water |
Western Downs | Land, power | Connectivity |
Townsville | Land, workforce | Power |
Source: Powerlink Transmission Annual Planning Report 2025, CleanCo, Seqwater, PeeringDB, council development registers and operator disclosures, August 2026.
Ipswich holds 1.2GW of grid connection at Swanbank
CleanCo says its Swanbank Energy Precinct covers 336 hectares and "has a grid connection capacity of up to 1.2GW", meaning the site is already wired to take that much electricity. It carries Swanbank E, a 385MW gas station running since 2002, and a 250MW lithium-ion battery that Powerlink energised in October 2025 through a new high-voltage bay at the neighbouring Blackstone substation.
Swanbank sits 60km from the Brisbane exchanges where the customers are. It recorded no residents at the 2021 census. A ten-storey data centre was filed there with Ipswich City Council on 4 August 2026, on a Leaf Street site, and would potentially be the tallest building in the local government area.
Polaris Data Centre at Springfield Central, about 15km away in the same council area, publishes two meet-me rooms on diverse paths and a 140km fibre network into the Brisbane central business district, and PeeringDB records thirteen networks present in the building, including MegaIX Brisbane.
Ipswich also draws on a recycled water scheme that is already running. Seqwater's Western Corridor scheme delivered 2,442 megalitres of cleaned recycled water in 2024-25, and 776 megalitres of that went to Swanbank Power Station. The Bundamba treatment plant on the same scheme produced nothing across the year, and supply to industrial customers through Urban Utilities did not run at all, so the scheme's spare capacity needs recommissioning before anyone can buy it.
Kogan sits 600 metres from a substation
Singapore developer Zerra DC filed a data centre campus at Kogan with Western Downs Regional Council on 17 August 2026, on 725.5 hectares of land already set aside for heavy industry, with Urbis as its town planner. The plans put it at 1.44GW and the technical appendices at 2.16GW. High-voltage transmission lines cross the property and the Braemar substation is about 600 metres away. Powerlink's 2025 planning report records no constraint over the history of the Surat section of the grid, and within about 50km sit Kogan Creek, Braemar 1 and 2, Darling Downs and the Western Downs Green Power Hub.
Western Downs Regional Council told the federal regional telecommunications review in 2024 that fixed-line connections reach the town centres of Chinchilla, Dalby and Miles with "considerable gaps in provision" elsewhere, and asked for spare paths that remove single points of failure. No carrier has published a route to the Kogan site, and no connection agreement with Powerlink has been disclosed. The site also sits about 15km from the nearest piped water, and two cooling figures are in the public record: the developer describes air-cooled buildings using 4.8 megalitres a year each, while the ABC reported a 26.9 megalitre fill for each building at commissioning.
Toowoomba's fibre carries data to Brisbane and back in two milliseconds
Pulse DC, at Wellcamp west of Toowoomba, says data reaches Brisbane and returns in about two milliseconds, over two physically separate paths to the rack, and lists QCN Fibre among its platform partners. Centuria bought the facility for A$30 million and settled on 30 January 2026. It runs 2.5MW with room to 7.5MW.
Toowoomba has been under water restrictions for years, with the current target of 200 litres per person per day in force since March 2022, and its treated wastewater is already piped 98km to the Millmerran power station. Council resolved in August 2026 to develop a policy keeping data centres out of the city's drinking water supply, with deputy mayor Rebecca Vonhoff saying "people need to be prioritised over machines".
Sunshine Coast industrial land runs out by 2028
The JGA-South subsea cable branches into Maroochydore, where Sunshine Coast Council completed the cable landing station in 2019, and Brisbane carries the state's operating facilities, which are set out in the list of data centres in Australia. NEXTDC runs SC1 at Maroochydore at 1MW and has SC2 in development at 6MW. Ray White Commercial's Michael Shadforth puts Sunshine Coast industrial land supply on course to be exhausted by 2028.
The exception is Brendale, at the Brisbane end, where Quinbrook's Supernode holds three separate high-voltage connections into the South Pine substation. Quinbrook says the site is capable of hosting up to 2GW of IT capacity. That is a hosting capability. The power test here asks for a published connection figure, and the land test asks for 100 hectares, where Brendale has 30.
Townsville's power and water both arrive in 2032
Townsville City Council owns 2,200 hectares at Lansdown, zoned for high impact industry and connected to gas, rail, port and airport. CopperString's eastern link, just under 350km of high-voltage line from Reid River to Hughenden, is targeted for completion in 2032, and delivery now splits between Powerlink and a QIC-managed entity. The Haughton pipeline stage that would carry industrial water to Lansdown is aligned to the same 2032 timeframe.
Gladstone's spare electricity was contracted in March 2026
Gladstone has the land and the water. The state controls 26,934 hectares in the Gladstone State Development Area, and Awoonga Dam holds 730,500 megalitres. Technicians and trades workers make up 20.6 per cent of occupations in the local government area.
Rio Tinto, Queensland and the Commonwealth signed a A$2 billion package in March 2026 securing the Boyne aluminium smelter to at least 2040. Rio has contracted more than 2.8GW of Queensland renewables and 600MW of storage to serve it. Powerlink's Gladstone Project is reinforcing the area to hold its existing load through the potential retirement of Gladstone Power Station, which CS Energy notified to the market operator for March 2029.
Powerlink counts 110MW of technology demand in southern Queensland
Powerlink's 2025 planning report lists about 2,982MW of proposed new industrial demand across the state, and resolves it to three regions. The north accounts for 1,500MW of it, all attributed to electrification, and central Queensland for 1,372MW, attributed to hydrogen. Southern Queensland accounts for 110MW, listed under "technology" and transport infrastructure. On data centres the report says the expansions in New South Wales and Victoria "have not translated to date in Queensland, as evidenced by the limited interest from data centre proponents in Queensland, with minimal enquiries or developments progressing beyond preliminary stages", and it carries no data centre project in its demand forecast.
Powerlink published that report in 2025. The Kogan application, at 1.44GW on the plans alone, was filed on 17 August 2026. At national cabinet on 26 August 2026 first ministers agreed the Commonwealth will work with the states on consistent mandatory standards for data centre energy, water and land use, and intends to legislate them in early 2027, with Queensland arguing for its own approach throughout. Queensland's parliament passed the critical minerals bill in the same week, with data centres left out of the fast-track approvals pathway it created. A state industry body launched in July to argue the sector's case.
What to watch
Western Downs Regional Council has not decided the Kogan application, which must be publicly notified and can be appealed to the Planning and Environment Court. The Leaf Street application at Swanbank is assessed against the planning scheme's codes, so it carries neither step. QCN Fibre runs on spare capacity strung along Powerlink's transmission towers, and is extending along the CopperString route to Mount Isa. Powerlink's next planning report will show whether the 110MW figure moves.