From Lane Cove West to Japan: Goodman faces data centre pushback again

Lane Cove West’s win over Project Mars is making waves well beyond the patch.

Just days after Goodman withdrew its $1.2 billion Mars Road plan in late September, Reuters reported residents in Tsukuba, northeast of Tokyo, were stepping up criticism of what would be Goodman’s biggest data centre in Japan. Locals there say they didn’t grasp the project’s scale until huge cranes appeared on site in February. They also say it was first presented in 2023 as a logistics warehouse before the words “data centre” turned up. thestar

Sound familiar?

Goodman is pressing on regardless. It has a 50-megawatt data centre under construction in Tsukuba leased to Google for 20 years. Chief executive Greg Goodman told The Australian Financial Review on 4 November that losing the Lane Cove site set no precedent and the company still had “plenty of opportunity” around Australia.

Shareholders will consider a resolution at Goodman’s AGM later this month asking the board to disclose how it assesses environmental and social licence risks. And the federal government has flagged a ban on data centres close to homes.

Sources: The Australian Financial Review (subscriber article), Reuters via The Star