$10b of investment expected in NZ data centres over next 10 years

Thursday, 11 September 2025

Microsoft's first New Zealand data centre, in Auckland. Fifty-six data centres are operating and another 20 are in the planning stages, according to NZTech.

New Zealand’s booming data centre industry may not directly employ a huge number of people for the amount of electricity it consumes, but it is good for the global environment — and for the local technology industry — to have them located here.

Those would appear to be some of the findings from a report into the sector released by technology industry association NZTech at an event headlined by Energy Minister Simon Watts this afternoon.

More than $10 billion will be invested in new and expanded data centres over the next decade, with 56 data centres already operating in the country and another 20 in the planning stages, according to NZTech.

Amazon Web Services has launched three Auckland data centres, promising 1000 jobs and a boost of up to $11b to GDP. But the investment has been clouded by uncertainty, with AWS refusing to confirm if the facilities are newly built or co-located.

It has become much more common over the past 20 years for businesses and consumers to rely on cloud-based computing services, often hosted in massive data centres, rather than to run software on their own computers in their businesses and homes.

But NZTech chairperson Delphine Ducarage said data centres were “not simply warehouses for information” and served as a catalyst for innovation, high-value job creation, greater digital resilience, and sustainable growth on the global stage.

“Unless data centre growth was supported by an equivalent growth in power generation and network infrastructure, this opportunity can become a risk,” she warned.

NZTech estimates there are 1000 people directly employed by data centres and that number will double by 2030.

Computer companies typically automate as much of their running as possible. But NZTech said they “supported” another 6800 jobs and it separately expected up to another 15,000 workers would need to be involved in their construction.

Low-rise, usually sporting little if any signage, and with few people coming or going, data centres rarely attract much attention, but many more are cropping up around the country.

The “bang for the buck” in terms of employment appears relatively low when the number of workers they directly employ is compared with the energy the facilities consume.

Data centres currently account for 0.6% of the country’s electricity demand and that is expected to increase to a not insignificant 1.8% by 2030, NZTech forecasts.

But the emissions they create are lower than if they were located in most other places around the world, both because of New Zealand’s abundance of renewable electricity sources and its relatively cool climate, which reduces the costs of cooling the racks of tightly packed servers they house.

NZTech reported the power-efficiency of data centres located in New Zealand was about 18% better than the global average.