SINGAPORE aims to provide at least 300 megawatts (MW) of additional capacity for data centres in the near term – with more that could be added for operators who tap green energy.
This is part of the Green Data Centre Roadmap, a new plan to develop sustainable data centres in the city-state, said Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said on Thursday (May 30) at the Asia Tech x Singapore conference.
Singapore is a regional data centre hub, with 1.4 gigawatts of capacity and over 70 data centres. But it has to balance the growth of this energy-intensive sector against its climate goals, having pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
In allocating the new data centre capacity, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) will “prioritise both sustainability and economic value”, said Heng.
The roadmap “will require data centre operators to work with enterprise users to enhance the energy efficiency of hardware and software deployed, and with energy suppliers to scale up the use of green energy,” he said.
Heng acknowledged that tapping green energy is challenging in Singapore with its natural resource constraints, but pledged to provide support to data centre operators.
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Enterprise end-users will also be able to tap government schemes such as the Energy Efficiency Grant to upgrade to more optimised equipment.
The new roadmap follows Singapore’s launch of the Tropical Data Centre standard last year, which guides data centres on raising their operating temperatures for energy efficiency in tropical climates.
Heng noted that the tech industry accounts for about 1.5 to 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. This figure could grow as adoption of AI and other energy-intensive technologies rises.
The new roadmap sets out to “achieve both our digital economy and to meet our climate goals”, he said.
