It is cheaper to build power plants close to sources of energy and to where the energy is consumed.
A gas-fired power station in the Canberra area makes little sense because the gas will come from Queensland or Victoria and the land in Canberra is more expensive than in outback Queensland.
It makes even less sense to build a data warehouse in Canberra because the cost of transporting data is much lower than the cost of transporting energy.
Perhaps the reason that Technical Real Estate wants to build a data centre in Tuggeranong is as a Trojan Horse to build office space in ACT-designated open space?
As the developers have convinced planners that a data centre is a communications facility, much like a radio transmitter, it will not be long before they convince the planners that offices that house people who use the communications facility are also communications facilities.
Getting cheap open space land in Canberra turned into land for offices makes for a very profitable venture and is a well-known method of allowing one group in a community to profit at the expense of the rest.
Kevin Cox, Ngunnawal
Data centre proponents fail to understand why four Green MLAs were elected to put an end to the mates-helping-mates Liberal and Labor eras.
In seeking compensation for the old order changing, data centre proponents must live in fairyland if they've never heard of sovereign risk.
Jon Stanhope seems to be acting as a pro bono lawyer for the data centre. This suggests he is also out of touch with reality and needs counselling about his duty statement.
Expecting cash for corporate stupidity is lunacy on steroids. For the 28th time: we don't mind a noisy, smelly, unsightly, gas-fired powerhouse.
Graham Macafee, Latham
While you made some good points in your editorial on November 15, I believe your argument that opposition to the siting of these projects on block 1617 in Tuggeranong was purely ''politicisation'' is grossly inaccurate and extremely unfair on the Tuggeranong and South Woden residents, the Liberals and the Greens.
It is a shallow argument you make that the Liberals and residents mounted a vigorous campaign against the project being sited 600m from residences only because they wanted to politically attack the Stanhope Government ''to politicise the matter''.
You fail to mention that the April 28 ActewAGL briefing to the community, which finally revealed just how untenable the project really was, only occurred because of pressure applied by an alarmed community. The untenable nature of the project was not improved by the scaled-down proposal.
You also failed to mention that the belated environmental impact statement (only commenced under pressure) lost any credibility when the Stanhope Government removed the health impact assessment members.
While you lament the concern of business and the fear they might go elsewhere, you fail to mention it was the Stanhope Government and its agents not Opposition that led the proponents up the garden path and placed them in an untenable position.
Stanhope should compensate Technical Real Estate out of his own pocket and Labor Club profits.
Steve Pratt, former MLA, Farrer
Without even reading the detail of the environmental impact statement on the data centre, the strongest objections would obviously be to the gas-fired generator, its noise and single chimney effluent that replaced the much larger power plant in the earlier version.
There is now much less difficulty in relocating the generator to another site where the output does not incur transmission losses and the loss of co-generation benefits from a generator (run only when needed) would take away the obvious objections. Why should relocation of the generator be such a stumbling block?
Local residents are right to object to the way the developers always seem to get what they want. Once it is built, with huge money changing hands, we have to live with the problems, some not foreseen.
C.P. Glover, Canberra City
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