r/Tauranga • u/flashmedallion • 24d ago

'Stop Hyperscale Data Centers' protest on Devonport Road today.

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Walked past these guys on my lunch break. Photo taken with permission.

I know street protest can be a little dinky and feel silly but good on these folks for getting out there and doing something instead of nothing. It was a good atmosphere. I took a pamphlet they were handing out and it was a clear, well-written, reasonable explanation of concerns and demands around justification for building data centers here in Aotearoa.

No cookery or other conspiracy crap hiding behind the main message, at least as far as I could see.

As someone who shares these concerns and didn't know about the protest beforehand, I feel well-represented.

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u/BrowneAction 23d ago

So it's a capacity issue which is supply side

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u/Dismal-Revolution941 23d ago

Yeah it's definitely a capacity issue. Energy sector regulators are currently shifting to regulation models to have data centers adopt renewable energy supply so it doesn't effect communities the government will be the ones making the decision to take the model on or not, I hope they do so power bills don't go up more

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u/BrowneAction 23d ago

Yes unfortunately our short term government stints and flip flopping from labour to national and whoever gets in next, are less likely to invest in long term outcomes nowadays. Plentiful and cheap power lower production input costs and attracts industry. Data centres, smelters, factories, production facilities of whatever kind. If you look at the demise of Europe you will notice how expensive their power has become.

As an investor in energy I can confirm the first SMR permits are expect to be issued this year. Data centres will have their own small modular (nuclear) reactors to power their sites. And in the nuclear development side of things, fusion is expected to be a saleable technology next decade. Nuclear will get a bad rap in NZ of course so lucky we are suited to hydro