The Legislative Council's Public Accountability and Works Committee sat for a third time on 22 May 2026, in the Macquarie Room at Parliament House. Nine panels gave evidence: the grid operator, the water utility, climate and community groups, industry, unions, academics and the NSW Government. This is the read-along, with the day's recurring places put on a live map. The full record is the uncorrected transcript ↗ on the NSW Parliament page.
Read the transcript (PDF) ↗ Back to the case study ←
This is an uncorrected transcript. Witnesses may later correct the record; quotes here should be read as provisional and checked against the final version when the Committee publishes it.
Hearing 3 moved from the contested numbers of the first two sittings to the bodies that have to live with them. TransgridTransgridOperator of the high-voltage transmission network in NSW. It fields the data-centre connection enquiries that signal how much new load is heading for the grid. put a figure on the pipeline pressing on the network. Sydney Water and the Water Services Association spoke to potable-water draw. Climate and environment groups argued for guardrails, while industry and Western Sydney business made the growth case. The sharpest evidence was local: residents of Lane Cove West on a hyperscale proposal at their doorstep, and Wingecarribee Shire on what a regional landing looks like.
The through-line for Pulse Horizon is the same as the case study's: nearly every concern raised in the room (grid headroom, curtailed renewables, cooling and water load, backup diesel, suburb-level amenity) is something the live hex layer already measures. Below, the day's recurring places are pinned on a live basemap, and the headline numbers are quoted from the transcript itself.
Transgrid told the Committee its network has fielded more than 10 GW of data-centre connection enquiries, with roughly 6 GW progressing to formal applications. The 10 GW is the early enquiry stage; the 6 GW is once a project has moved into the connection process.
“Your submission says that Transgrid has received connection inquiries from data centres totalling more than 10 gigawatts, with approximately six gigawatts progressing to formal applications.” PAWC, Data Centres inquiry, Hearing 3 (uncorrected transcript), 22 May 2026
Against that pipeline, the Carbon Zero Initiative put the figure expected to genuinely materialise on the grid at about 3.5 GW between now and 2035, arguing the gap is why siting and sequencing matter.
“I think we have about 3.5 gigawatts that's expected to materialise on the grid between now and 2035—it's going to be extremely difficult, based on the amount of new renewable energy that data centres are bringing onto the grid, for them to meet that.” PAWC, Data Centres inquiry, Hearing 3 (uncorrected transcript), 22 May 2026
Right now, around 2.1 GW of renewable generation is being curtailed in regional NSW. The argument: latency-tolerant AI workloads could be sited where that clean power is already being spilled, instead of loading the most constrained parts of the grid.
“Right now 2.1 gigawatts of renewable energy is being curtailed in regional New South Wales.” PAWC, Data Centres inquiry, Hearing 3 (uncorrected transcript), 22 May 2026
Some 84% of newly proposed data-centre workloads include AI. A good share are latency-tolerant — they don't have to sit next to the city, which is what makes the siting question live.
“Some 84 per cent of new proposed data centre workloads include AI. A good proportion of these workloads are latency-tolerant workloads that can be located in peri-urban or regional areas.” PAWC, Data Centres inquiry, Hearing 3 (uncorrected transcript), 22 May 2026
The Goodman proposal at 12 Mars Road, Lane Cove West: 22,000 m², operating 24/7, with 49 diesel backup generators and roughly 1,014,000 litres of diesel stored on-site. Residents told the Committee a full outage would run the bunker down in about 1.2 days.
“Operating 24/7, the proposed facility is 22,000 square metres, contains 49 diesel generators and massive cooling infrastructure, and will be substantially higher than LEP regulations despite homes being less than 20 metres away, a public school being within 160 metres and it overshadowing the Lane Cove Community Nursery.” PAWC, Data Centres inquiry, Hearing 3 (uncorrected transcript), 22 May 2026
“There's 1,014,000 litres of diesel being stored onsite to run those generators.” PAWC, Data Centres inquiry, Hearing 3 (uncorrected transcript), 22 May 2026
Evidence pointed to a gas-plant proposal — first knocked back by the local council and under challenge in the Land and Environment Court — that the proponent now wants to expand to over 600 MW. Cited as the kind of fossil-firming a fast, uncoordinated build-out can pull in.
“But now they've said—I think just within the last week or so—that they want to beef up that plant to over 600 megawatts, which is huge, as you mentioned.” PAWC, Data Centres inquiry, Hearing 3 (uncorrected transcript), 22 May 2026
Each map is a live basemap centred on a place named in evidence. The data-centre, heat and incident overlays for these areas sit on Sydney Live.
The hearing's sharpest local flashpoint. Goodman's proposed hyperscale facility at 12 Mars Road sits at the residential end of the Lane Cove West Business Park, beside a school, conservation land and Lane Cove National Park — and beside the existing AirTrunk facility that, residents said, first alerted the community to the gaps in data-centre regulation. The group counts five proposals clustering in the precinct.
Cited as the precedent for what clustering already looks like: several data centres in one precinct, three metro stations, and government plans for significant housing on top. Business Western Sydney noted some of these are sovereign facilities storing classified Federal data onshore — the contested ground being who gets to know what a given centre is actually for.
The regional view. Wingecarribee Shire — Bowral, Mittagong and Moss Vale, about 75 km south-west of Sydney with a population near 54,000 — gave evidence on what it means for a data-centre landing to arrive in a regional shire rather than the metro corridor: water, amenity and the call for genuine community consultation before, not after, consent.
The backdrop to the whole inquiry: the cluster of GW-scale sites across the west. The siting argument — put latency-tolerant load where renewable energy is already being curtailed — is really an argument about whether the next wave lands here again, or somewhere the grid has headroom.
Every figure and quote on this page is read directly from the uncorrected transcript of the third hearing, published by the NSW Legislative Council. Uncorrected means witnesses may still correct their evidence; treat quotes as provisional until the corrected transcript is released. We've quoted verbatim where we can and linked the source on each number. Place markers on the maps are approximate locator points, not surveyed coordinates, and the basemap is © OpenStreetMap, © CARTO.
Uncorrected transcript, 22 May 2026 (PDF) ↗ Inquiry page (pk=3169) ↗ The full case study → Sydney Live →
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