Data centres top Australia's private non-residential construction starts at $18.2bn
Green.com.au analysis of ABS building data puts data centre-related construction starts at $18.2 billion in 2025-26, with $18.3 billion of work still to be completed. NSW and Victoria account for most of it as AEMO expects demand to triple.
Construction starts in the ABS category that includes data centres reached $18.2 billion in 2025-26, more than three times the previous year and the largest category of private non-residential building commencements in Australia, according to Green.com.au analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data. The analysis estimates $18.3 billion of building work in the category is still to be completed. The category ranked 14th of 15 building types six years earlier and fourth the year before.
News24 reported that this exceeds the $10 billion of warehouse and $7.3 billion of office construction that began in the same period, and compares with $361 million of data centre construction started in 2019-20. News24 describes the $18.3 billion as work that began in the 2026 financial year, while Green.com.au puts new starts at $18.2 billion and the $18.3 billion as work yet to be completed. The ABS figures do not separately identify the value attributable only to data centres.
The build cycle is long: $6.4 billion of work was completed in 2025-26, almost double the prior year. That equates to 13 cents for every dollar of new work started, against 72 cents for private non-residential building generally. Green.com.au estimates about $9 billion could be completed in the current financial year if construction continues at its current pace.
NSW and Victoria account for about 91 per cent of the activity, with NSW at 46.6 per cent and Victoria at 44.3 per cent. The research says the two states also account for about 96 per cent of current data centre electricity demand. NSW represents 66 per cent of that demand and Victoria 30 per cent, so Victoria's share of construction is well above its share of consumption, which suggests it could take a growing share of future demand.
AEMO expects data centre electricity consumption in the National Electricity Market to triple by 2029-30 and to reach 13 per cent of total demand by 2035-36. The growth coincides with the planned retirement of Victoria's Yallourn coal plant in 2028 and NSW's Eraring in 2029. Dave Green, founder of Green.com.au, said, "Government, business and the public all have to think about what supplying an industry like this does to the grid".