Blackstone has been quietly exploring the option to start building renewable generation to power its data centres in Australia, sources said.

The platform is being built from the ground-up and it has so far made small land and asset acquisitions behind the scenes, the sources told NPM.

Australian state and federal ministers in August agreed to develop national standards for large data centres as part of Australia’s planned AI laws, which the federal government intends to legislate in early 2027.

The proposed rules would set minimum requirements for large data centres covering energy use, including supplying their own power, water consumption, land use, skills and workforce training.

Blackstone has committed tens of billions of dollars to data centres globally.

It bought data centre play QTS Data Centers for USD 10bn in 2021, which now has 4.4 GW of data centres across 56 facilities in the US and Europe, according to NPM data.

Blackstone and Canadian pension fund, CPPIB, acquired Australia-based AirTrunk for its Asia-Pacific strategy in 2024 for AUD 24bn (USD 16.7bn) – the biggest data centre acquisition in the world at the time.

It now has more than 755 MW of data centres across five assets in Melbourne and Sydney.

AirTrunk also has data centres operating and under development in Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia.

The 25 MW Mulwala solar farm in the Riverina District of New South Wales was due to connect to the grid in June this year after its developer, European Energy, signed a PPA with Google and AirTrunk.

In July, Blackstone hired a managing director and Head of Infrastructure for India, marking its first dedicated appointment in APAC.

On October 7, AirTrunk founder and CEO, Robin Khuda, told Nikkei it plans to increase its total Japanese investments to between USD 27bn and USD 30bn over the next five years.

Blackstone and AirTrunk declined to comment.