Reuters reported in an exclusive on Sunday 1 November, as carried by investingLive, that startup Energy North has dropped the June 2028 first power date for Project Ares, its planned 1 gigawatt gas and solar data centre on a cattle station in Australia’s Northern Territory. Energy North told Reuters the date “had been indicative” and that it was no longer working to it.
The territory’s environment regulator is behind the delay. Its 15 September statement of reasons describes a proposal involving clearing of up to 19,150 hectares and up to 4 GL a year of groundwater; by our arithmetic, that is about 191.5 square kilometres of land and about 11 megalitres of water a day.
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The key insight: Reuters reports, via investingLive, that Energy North has dropped the June 2028 first power date for its 1 GW Project Ares after the Northern Territory’s regulator paused its assessment timeline to consult Canberra; the regulator’s notice describes up to 19,150 hectares of clearing, about 191.5 square kilometres by our arithmetic.
According to the report, the Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority, in an October 7 ruling, “suspended its seven-week deadline for deciding which hurdles the project must clear”. It said it would seek advice from the federal government, which is “still developing policy expectations for data centres and AI infrastructure”.
The report says the ruling identified 10 potential impacts, “ranging from strain on water systems to disruption of Aboriginal sacred sites”, and that the regulator had low confidence the proposed measures would manage significant impacts effectively.
The NT EPA’s own 15 September notice had already required a full environmental impact statement. It describes “a hyperscale data centre with a total information technology capacity of 1 GW”, “gas fired power generation infrastructure up to 1,038 megawatt and onsite gas storage”, and “up to 4 GL/yr of groundwater extracted from the Wiso Basin”.
Project Ares in gigawatts: 1 GW of IT capacity and gas-fired generation of up to 1,038 megawatts, per the NT EPA’s 15 September 2026 notice, beside FourWeekMBA’s estimate of about 2.2 GW for 1.2 million Blackwell GPUs at Colossus 2. The 1.04x ratio is our arithmetic.
The Scale of the Campus
The report describes a roughly 190 square kilometre campus “almost 700 km from the nearest city”, with gas turbines, a solar farm, an airstrip and housing for 4,300 construction workers. The regulator’s notice says clearing of “up to 19,150 ha” creates a potentially significant risk of erosion.
By our arithmetic, the gas plant’s up to 1,038 megawatts is about 1.04 times the 1 GW of IT capacity the notice describes. Energy North said it would confirm timing once the regulator set terms for an environmental impact statement, and it declined to identify its financiers, the report says.
The Business Lever: Permits Set the Calendar
As we read it, the regulator’s pause moves the project’s timeline from the developer’s schedule to the approval process. The report calls it “the largest timing setback for an Australian data centre so far”, following NextDC’s delay of a Melbourne expansion over energy supply and Goodman’s withdrawal of a Sydney project after resident opposition.
The same pattern runs through our recent coverage: our midterms piece covered US candidates who want to pause data centre construction, and our NextDC piece covered the backlash that cut the operator’s guidance. For scale, our Colossus 2 power piece estimated that 1.2 million Blackwell GPUs would need about 2.2 GW.
The Structural Read
As we read the report, the regulator’s pause sets the project’s calendar: Energy North says it will confirm timing only once environmental impact statement terms are set.
By our arithmetic, the planned gas generation of up to 1,038 megawatts is about 1.04 times the 1 GW of IT capacity the notice describes, so the power plant and the data centre are planned at about the same scale.
As we read the notice, the regulator asked for an environmental impact statement partly to improve its own level of confidence in predicting the project’s impacts.
NT EPA notice of decision and statement of reasons, Project Ares, 15 September 2026
“the need to improve the NT EPAโs level of confidence in predicting potential significant impacts of the proposed action”
Three Implications
FOR DEVELOPERS The report says Energy North will confirm timing once the regulator sets terms for an environmental impact statement.
FOR THE TERRITORY The report says the territory government is reportedly in talks with 12 data centre-related projects.
FOR FINANCIERS The report says Energy North declined to identify its financiers.
The framework says: “The $1T capex cycle is being underwritten by a $1T concentrated demand commitment from two counterparties whose combined free cash flow is deeply negative.”
As we read it, campuses such as Project Ares are where that capex lands; the framework does not discuss Australian approvals.
We could not read the Reuters article directly; its facts here are as investingLive reports them, and the October 7 ruling is not yet posted on the NT EPA’s register. The square-kilometre, megalitre and gas-to-IT figures are our arithmetic from the regulator’s 15 September notice. No new start date has been given, and Energy North has not named its financiers.
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Reuters reports that Energy North has dropped the June 2028 start date for its 1 GW Project Ares data centre after the Northern Territory’s regulator paused its assessment timeline to consult Canberra. The regulator’s notice describes a proposal involving clearing of up to 19,150 hectares and up to 4 GL a year of groundwater, about 191.5 square kilometres and 11 megalitres a day by our arithmetic.
A note on sourcing. The Reuters exclusive is reported here as investingLive carried it; project figures are from the NT EPA’s 15 September 2026 notice. Square-kilometre, megalitre and gas-to-IT figures are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
