호주의 데이터센터 건설 붐이 가속화되고 있으며, 보험업계가 전력 및 전력망 기반시설 압박 속의 급속한 확장에 대응하기 위해 보험료 및 요금을 조정하고 있다.

Australia's data centre construction boom is unfolding amid tightening regulatory oversight. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pledged that large-scale data centres will need to fund new power supply, cover full grid connection costs, and become net-generators rather than net-users of energy. The government's planned "triple lock" standards will also require new projects to fund network costs and improve demand flexibility, positioning Australia to lead in AI rather than simply host it.

Data Centres Australia supports a single national standard, though industry details remain under negotiation, particularly regarding operator and customer responsibilities. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has called for a moratorium on new hyperscale approvals "until we get the regulatory settings right."

The market scale is shifting dramatically. With around 160 existing data centres in Australia and 90-plus on the way, individual sites can exceed $10 billion in value. Many of the largest developments are multi-stage campuses that continue expanding years after the first data hall opens. Globally, capital expenditure on data centres is expected to reach $7 trillion by 2030, according to McKinsey. Rajat Rana, a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, described the investment on CNBC as "the largest peacetime investment project in human history."

For insurers, the core underwriting challenge is not project size or any single peril—it is how rapidly exposure scales during construction. Stevan Bonic, Underwriting Manager Engineering, Australasia at HDI Global, explains: "The main difference is the speed at which they can construct very high-value assets compared to standard commercial or residential builds." Where single warehouse-style facilities were once the norm, insurers now manage sprawling campuses that expand rapidly. "Asset accumulation is one huge factor that insurers have to understand and deal with. And it can significantly affect capacity," Bonic says.

Early understanding of the full development life cycle is critical. HDI encourages clients and brokers to discuss future expansion before financing terms are locked in. One recently underwritten $3 billion project has since expanded to $10 billion as the campus grew from two halls to six.

Fire remains a primary concern, particularly with large diesel backup generators and increasingly extensive lithium-ion battery energy storage systems. Operators tolerate no downtime, making resilience paramount. The greatest risk period is testing and commissioning, when substations, transformers and switchgear are powered up and run at full capacity.

Prefabricated modular construction adds complexity. Systemic defects in components—such as cooling pipework—can go undetected until commissioning, by which point hundreds of identical units may be installed across a campus. Ben Mollee, Risk Engineering Manager at HDI Global, who has surveyed more than a dozen sites over two years, notes that water damage exposures remain inadequately addressed during construction, with gaps in formal water management planning, leak detection, and automatic isolation. The shift toward direct liquid cooling adds further commissioning exposure, where water quality issues can cause equipment damage and costly rework.

Campus density is reshaping fire risk. "Increasing data centre campus density is resulting in reduced building separation distances, which increases the potential for fire spread and accumulation risk," Mollee says.

A critical distinction often overlooked: construction cover typically refers to the "warm shell"—the building, utilities and infrastructure—rather than the servers, racking and GPUs running AI workloads. Coverage requirements shift as projects move from construction to operation. Jonathon Willoughby, Senior Engineering Underwriter for HDI Global, notes that Contract Works and Operational Property policies are "two distinctly separate policies."

During construction, underwriters assess contractor quality, design complexity, construction methodology, and testing activities. Once operational, focus shifts to asset values, fire protection, maintenance standards, redundancy, business interruption, and operational resilience. "The goal is to make sure there are no gaps or unintended overlaps in cover, particularly during testing, energisation, commissioning and any phased occupation of the asset," Willoughby says.

For campus capacity planning, HDI does not assess a new data centre campus solely by contract value of the current stage. Accumulation risk—total exposure to a single event across the entire campus—is paramount. When a campus consists of one or two halls, exposure is relatively contained, and assessment focuses on contractor quality, design complexity, and natural catastrophe exposure. As projects scale, the analysis shifts fundamentally. "As the campus expands from two halls to six, the analysis changes and we start looking at the campus as a single exposure rather than a collection of individual projects," Willoughby says. Shared infrastructure—substations, cooling plants, fuel systems, and utility connections—creates single points of failure where one incident affects several halls simultaneously. "Ultimately, we're not just asking whether we like the next stage; we're asking whether we're comfortable with our total exposure if a catastrophic event impacts the entire campus at once," Willoughby says.

Early involvement is essential given the scale and speed of development. Decisions made during design and pre-development can mitigate risks that become expensive to fix once contracts are signed and equipment is installed. "Data centres are designed to be highly resilient and security-focused facilities because operational downtime triggers massive business interruption and liability exposures. Ensuring reliable power supply, cooling performance, fire and smoke mitigation, and water management remains paramount," Bonic says.

For operators, developers and investors, early collaboration between insurers, brokers, risk engineers and project teams can improve resilience, manage accumulation exposures and support long-term operational reliability. As data centre development accelerates across Australia, combining specialist underwriting expertise with risk engineering insights becomes increasingly important.