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SINGAPORE — Singapore is making a push for green data centers as exploding demand for artificial intelligence puts strain on its energy resources.
The country unveiled a roadmap for green data centers on Thursday to support its digital economy ambitions amid growing demand for AI and computing.
“As demand for digital and AI computing continues to grow, so will the need for data centre capacity,” Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information Janil Puthucheari said on Thursday.
The roadmap aims to provide at least 300 megawatts of additional capacity in the near future, and further increase capacity through “adoption of green energy”.
Plans to provide additional data centre capacity include improving the energy efficiency of all data centres in Singapore, installing energy-efficient IT equipment, and providing incentives and subsidies for resource efficiency.
“The data centre here also leverages Singapore's broader international status as a business and digital hub,” the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore said in a press release. IMDA promotes and regulates Singapore's communications and media sectors.
“As demand for AI has grown, so has the demand for energy. This will put strain on national energy networks and will need to be managed in the short term,” the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change Research said in a report on Wednesday.
The AI boom has created high demand for data centers to store the vast amounts of data needed to train and deploy AI models, which in turn consumes a lot of energy.
Companies Microsoft and Google The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change said governments were investing heavily in expanding the use of clean energy, but they needed to continue creating incentives for companies to do so.
Puthucheari said data centres were the “largest source of indirect carbon emissions” in the information and communications sector, “responsible for 82% of Singapore's ICT sector emissions and 7% of Singapore's total electricity consumption.”
According to data from global real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, Singapore is the second-largest data center market in Southeast Asia and the sixth-largest in the Asia-Pacific region.
According to IMDA, Singapore has more than 70 cloud, enterprise and colocation data centres capable of hosting intensive workloads for cloud platforms, digital services and AI.
Cushman & Wakefield said that with the global data center market set to hit new highs in 2023, power restrictions are “forcing data center operators to further evaluate untapped smaller markets around the world.”
