STOP THE
GAS PLANT

STOP THE GAS PLANT - Southern Highlands

A massive gas-fired power plant has been proposed in the Highlands.

Our community is fighting it. Join us.

What’s happening?

A 673 megawatt gas-fired power plant is proposed to be built at 30 Douglas Rd. That’s walking distance to Moss Vale, New Berrima and Burradoo, and the closest houses are just 500m away.

It would be the second-largest gas plant in NSW. But as it’s solely built to run a private data centre, it won’t power a single home.

What that looks like:

  • Air pollution that could cause respiratory problems

  • 6-storey stacks visible from across the highlands and locking in industrial scale

  • Fossil fuels burning for decades to come.

The community will bear the brunt of this, but will see no benefits.

Why worry?

Air quality &
health impacts

Gas plants are known to cause harm to respiratory health.

This one would release heavy industrial emissions into our air, continuously: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

These include Nitrogen Oxides (NOx), particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), and carbon monoxide.

Over time these pollutants can lead to inflammation, coughing and asthma attacks.

Huge scale

This thing is enormous.

The emissions stacks alone would be 23.5m high. That’s almost twice the maximum height council wants to allow (12m limits in the SHIP master plan).

With no hills in the way, those stacks will be visible from across the Highlands.

With 19 generation halls and 673 megawatts of output, this would be bigger than the Kurri Kurri gas plant (which was designed to back up the NSW grid).

This is record breaking: it would be the largest of this type (internal combustion engine gas plant) on Earth.

Heavy industry locked in

If this is built, our hopes for a Southern Highlands Innovation Park will be dust.

Council’s 2025 Masterplan says this land is supposed to be an innovation corridor: a clean, advanced manufacturing and research precinct, "not your typical industrial park".

But if the gas plant is allowed to go ahead, the SHIP will become unusable for it’s intended purpose, and attract ever more heavy industry.

Any heavy industry needs to be clustered around the Boral Cement works at the western edge - not here, so close to homes and towns.

Climate bomb

If this proposal is built, we’ll be burning fossil fuels in the Highlands for decades.

The emissions will be unthinkable. The first phase of the project alone, generating 30MW, will generate 112,286 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions every year.

And that’s just the beginning.

Doing this in 2026, to power a data centre, is using dirty, outdated technology to power the future’s computing capacity.

It’s unsound and environmentally disastrous.

Get into the details

The gas plant would be built to service the Southern Highlands Data Campus.

The proposal for the whole Data Campus has been split into multiple applications, so different parts are being assessed through different channels.

Stage 1 is a data centre and 14-Megawatt gas plant. It’s already been approved.

Stage 2 would be a 16MW expansion. It’s currently being assessed.

Stage 3 is the full delivery of the whole massive data centre and gas plant. It’s in the early stages.

Click below for more details and documentation.

  • This proposal is for a 16MW expansion of the existing small data centre. It uses 7 gas generators and an 80MW Battery Energy Storage System (BESS).

    It is currently in the Land and Environment Court as a "deemed refusal".

    You can help oppose it by joining us at the conciliation conference at 30 Douglas Rd, at 10am on Friday 22 May.

    More info: This is a DA, which means Council was the consent authority. Find documents and updates in Council’s DA tracker here.

  • This is the 673.2MW gas plant, attached to a huge bank of data centres. It’s the masterplan for the whole data campus.

    The developer has applied for this to be assessed as a State Significant Development. This means it will be assessed by the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI), with a final decision made by the Minister - UNLESS we can generate enough community push-back, in which case it would be assessed by the Independent Planning Commission.

    Be ready to make submissions!

    DPHI has already issued the Secretary’s Environmental Assessment Requirements (SEARs), meaning the process has started and the developer is preparing a response.

    The Environmental Impact Statement comes next.

    Find all the details on the DPHI website.