Explainer: What Is A Data Centre And Why Is Everyone Freaking Out Now? These 'on-premises' data centres are still being built - an all-of-government data centre that hosts the country's most sensitive public data opened at Whenuapai airbase last year. The new data centres being proposed and constructed are AI data centres - to train and run proprietary AI models. Both the International Energy Agency and a United Nations research group recently published reports estimating that data centre energy use will double by 2030. There have also been complaints about noise, the consenting or permitting process, and a lack of transparency from data centre companies.