Expansion will be supported by three new solar farms in Victoria and Queensland
Amazon is planning to invest AU$20 billion (US$13bn) by 2029 in expanding data center infrastructure in Australia.
The investment will see Amazon developing additional data centers and expanding its existing facilities in Sydney and Melbourne.
According to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, it is the largest investment in Australia by a global technology company to date.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) first entered Australia in 2012 when it launched a cloud region in Sydney.
A second region was added in 2023, located in Melbourne. An AWS Local Zone was launched that same year in Perth.
In July 2024, AWS announced it was building a data center for the Australian government that would handle "top-secret" data. The data center and cloud system are being developed as a partnership between AWS and the Australian government, with the latter committing to investing AU$2 billion (US$1.3 billion) in the new system over the next ten years.
Last year also saw AWS planning new data centers in Melbourne and Sydney, though it later withdrew the Sydney application. The Melbourne facility is a $50m data center on a 13.2-hectare site at 54-80 Ferris Road, Cobblebank, about 40km west of Melbourne’s center.
The cloud giant's Sydney region is hosted in an AWS-operated campus in the Eastern Creek area of Sydney. AWS is also developing a new campus in Western Sydney, dubbed "Project Echidna."
Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, said of the company's investment commitment: "This planned investment deepens our long-term commitment to supporting the growth and development of Australian organizations of all sizes and helping them harness the enormous opportunity that generative AI offers. We’re proud to be expanding our world-class data center infrastructure, bringing more renewable energy projects online, and supporting the country’s vision to be a global AI leader.”
To support the expanding cloud infrastructure, Amazon is also investing in three new solar farms in Victoria and Queensland.
The solar farms will be delivered and operated by European Energy. Amazon has committed to purchasing 170MW of power across the three sites, adding to the other eight solar and wind projects in Australia that Amazon has previously invested in.
Once all 11 renewable energy projects are operational, they are estimated to generate more than 1.4 million megawatt hours of carbon-free energy annually.
