Two giant data centres get initial green light from Cape Town tribunal

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An application that paves the way for two new data centres totalling more than 120,000 square metres in Cape Townâs Airport Industria area has been approved by the Municipal Planning Tribunal.

The land use, subdivision and consolidation application by King David Country Club, which owns the area known as King Air Industria, neither makes mention of how much water the giant data centres will use, nor does it detail energy supply and demand.

The lack of information on this, and on backup diesel generation, fuel storage, air pollution, noise and related health impacts, formed the basis for opposition to the application by the Housing Assembly, a Cape Town-based social movement, and the UK-based tech justice non-profit organisation Foxglove, which received advice from the Legal Resource Centre.

Presenting to the tribunal on Tuesday, Legal Resource Centre attorney Kimal Harvey said their research revealed that for every 1MW of electricity needed, a data centre using traditional cooling techniques consumes about 25.5 million litres of water per year. The proposed data centres at King Air Industria, to be built by the US multinational company Equinix, would have an electrical demand of about 174MW â which equates to about 4.4 billion litres of water per year.

This amount of electricity could power about 130,000 homes.

The lack of this information in the land use application was a âcriticalâ gap, stated Foxglove in their press release, and was âparticularly troublingâ.

Harvey said the Housing Assembly had pointed out that Cape Town had suffered serious historic problems with water scarcity, âwith their members literally watching taps run dry during the âDay Zeroâ crisis in the previous decadeâ.

âA serious insultâ

âThe failure of Equinix to provide any kind of substantive detail on the new data centreâs water consumption in their land use application not only renders it impossible for it to be properly considered by the City of Cape Town but is also arguably a serious insult to everyone who has suffered through this water scarcity in the recent past.â

The application by King David Country Club involves three erven, two of which are zoned as General Industry and one as Mixed Use. The landowner sought to have all three zoned as General Industry to get the zoning uniformity required by Equinix. The application also seeks to consolidate the three erven into a single plot and amend a 2019 approval condition that capped the floor space at 300,000 square metres.

A small land swap with the City, involving a substation, is also part of the application.

Harvey argued the application was mischaracterised as âonly a technical changeâ to the land use rights.

He said a data centre was defined within the Municipal Planning Amendment By-law as âa building or dedicated space within a building or a group of buildings used to store computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunication and storage systemsâ. But this definition was only created in the amendment in 2025, before the original application.

âTherefore, the inclusion of data centres in the definitions for business premises and warehouses cannot be retrospectively appliedâ, and a new application was necessary, he argued.

The mischaracterisation also existed in the applicantâs minimisation of the impact a data centre has on the surrounding areas and communities, which relates to its electricity and water usage.

âWholly inadequateâ

Tribunal member Wally Johnstone agreed that the current definition for a data centre was âwholly inadequateâ and âsimplisticâ, and there was no recognition that there was a significant change to the use of the land.

Johnstone said Cape Townâs water systems were under pressure, and noted a recent march in Khayelitsha over lack of access to water.

âThe concern is real and should not be ignored.â

He expressed further concern over the omission of greenhouse gas emission figures. This data was critical, he noted, as Cape Town grapples with the impact of global warming on its water security, as well as high electricity consumption that threatens an already unstable power grid.

âIâm obliged to conclude most of us donât know what is required in terms of water and electricity demand in an application weâre asked to approve,â he said, adding that the lack of information meant he was unable to support the application.

However, the other four tribunal members, including chair Sydney Holden, were of the view that details on water and electricity demand, along with other concerns, would be addressed in the Site Development Plan, which would still need to be approved.

They were in general agreement with the applicant that this was merely a technical amendment to the land-use rights.

In granting the application, Holden said a data centre would promote the city âas a global, competitive and innovation-driven hubâ, create downstream employment and contribute to âimproved digital infrastructureâ serving a variety of industries.

He said the Site Development Plan would have to be closely scrutinised, as well as the building plan, should the Site Development Plan be approved. DM

First published by GroundUp

Reporting originally appeared via Daily Maverick. Read the full source for additional context.