How a High Schooler in Marietta Built an AI That Disrupted a $10B Corporate Scheduling Industry

For many years, the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, Australia, has not been at the forefront of national infrastructure discussions. The area used coal-fired power plants to power Victoria for many generations before witnessing the industry’s gradual collapse as energy economics and climate policy shifted against thermal coal. A significant portion of the industrial jobs in the area were lost when the Hazelwood Power Station closed in 2017.

The remaining stations, Loy Yang and Yallourn, are slated to close in 2035 and 2028, respectively. Up until recently, the cumulative pattern appeared to be the kind of gradual regional industrial decline that observers in Australia had been anticipating. The situation has completely changed as a result of the $10 billion Keppel data center project that was approved in mid-January 2026.

Beneath the headline figure, the deal’s mechanics are worth examining. The Australian energy and infrastructure landlord Lightwood Group has granted Keppel Ltd., a global asset manager with headquarters in Singapore, the right to lease 123 hectares of industrial land close to the former Hazelwood site.

The arrangement is based on what Keppel refers to as a “powerbanking” strategy, which entails paying Lightwood an annual access fee to secure pre-development rights while the business obtains planning approvals, contracts power, and arranges water before its private data center funds eventually take up long-term leases. It is a capital-efficient construction. Additionally, it grants Keppel authority over what, if authorized and constructed, would grow to be Australia’s largest AI infrastructure site. Phased over a number of years, the proposed gross power capacity is up to 720 megawatts.

The features of the site that attracted Keppel to Morwell provide a unique perspective on how the data center sector truly considers location. The proposed Gippsland Renewable Energy Zone includes the former Hazelwood facility. One of Victoria’s biggest electrical transmission points is directly accessible from the land. The infrastructure from the former power plant already has the non-drinkable water sources needed for industrial cooling.

The region is part of Telstra’s intercity dark fiber network, which links Canberra, Sydney, and Melbourne. Power, water, fiber, industrial zoning, and regulatory clarity are all present in very few places in Australia. The data center business model is unaffected by the fact that the same area was formerly powered by coal. The access to cooling water, the grid connection, and the current industrial classification are all very important.

The announcement’s competitive background illustrates how quickly demand for data centers has been rising in Australia. In late November 2025, NextDC revealed plans to build a $7 billion plant near Eastern Creek in Sydney. Other operators have been rapidly entering Australian sites that combine power availability and closeness to existing fiber infrastructure. These operators include domestic operators, overseas hyperscalers, and the growing “neocloud” segment that focuses primarily on GPU-intensive AI applications.

Keppel’s chief executive of connectivity, Manjot Singh Mann, informed the media that the business is actively negotiating future capacity at the Hazelwood site with hyperscalers and neoclouds. AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and the AI-focused infrastructure providers that have been spearheading the most rapid demand increase in 2025 and 2026 are among the identified possible clients.

By regional Australian standards, the Latrobe Valley’s political reception has been unusually warm. The idea was presented by Mayor Sharon Gibson as evidence that “Latrobe City has powered Victoria for generations and is now uniquely positioned to support the next era of industry, including data, digital, and clean-energy-enabled infrastructure.”

” Martin Cameron, the state representative for Morwell, described it as “a show of confidence in our industrial landscape and workforce capacity.” For almost ten years, Gippsland’s political elite has been in charge of the local coal industry’s gradual collapse. The plan for a $10 billion data center, which, if constructed, would employ thousands during construction and a sizable workforce during operation, offers the kind of replacement industry that prior regional transitions have seldom been able to draw in.

Given how this narrative has evolved over the last few months, there’s a sense that the Hazelwood project reflects a certain direction for Australian energy infrastructure. AI technology now requires the same regional grid connections that sustained coal-fired electricity for decades. Server racks can be cooled by the same water used to cool steam turbines. Data centers benefit almost as much from the industrial zoning that was in place for power plants.

Although Larry Fink and other observers have pointedly questioned whether renewable energy alone can provide the dispatchable demand profile that hyperscale AI infrastructure truly requires, the move isn’t exactly the clean replacement that climate policy frameworks would desire. Whether the project proceeds from proposal to construction will depend on the planning permissions, community consultation, and regulatory work that take place over the following few months. By 2028 or 2030, the entire post-coal trajectory of the area might look different than anyone in Latrobe anticipated even three years ago.