KUALA LUMPUR (March 7): Data centres worldwide are experiencing rapid growth, fuelled by the soaring demand for digital services and generative artificial intelligence (AI). This unprecedented expansion has spurred a wave of innovation focused on sustainability and efficiency.

Modern data centres are designed with advanced technologies to minimise environmental impact, ensuring that power and water usage becomes greener and more efficient.
 
To meet these needs, campuses now often exceed a hundred megawatts (MW) in capacity while implementing ground-breaking solutions to manage resources responsibly.

Analyst firms tracking the Asia-Pacific market highlight a surge in hyperscale facilities, with many under construction or planning stages, showcasing the region's adaptability to this evolving landscape. 

Addressing innovation in power and water efficiency, Southeast Asia is emerging as a key hub for data centre development, with Malaysia, particularly Johor, leading the charge. What started as a small presence has grown into a powerhouse with over 1,500MW of capacity in a matter of years. Countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines are also advancing rapidly, capitalising on sustainable practices to support their expanding digital economies.
 
Recognising the need to harmonise growth with sustainability, data centre operators are integrating innovative solutions to address energy and water consumption. These include redesigning operations to improve energy efficiency, reducing reliance on traditional energy grids, and adopting green computing practices.
 
Cutting-edge cooling technologies, such as closed-loop liquid cooling, are becoming increasingly prevalent. They provide a more efficient way to manage the heat generated by high-performance computing workloads.

These advancements are vital in Southeast Asia, where heat, humidity and rising temperatures present unique challenges. By prioritising sustainability and deploying resource-resilient approaches, the data centre industry continues to evolve, ensuring the demands of a digital-first future can be met while respecting environmental boundaries.

Within data centres, operators can implement various energy-efficient solutions to boost operational efficiency and lessen their grid burden. Some of these measures include LED lighting, variable frequency drives (VFDs) for fans and motors, increasing the temp in the hot aisles, less frequent air exchanges and a number of other measures.

Some of these energy-efficient measures are being adopted from other regions and some are new and being explored in the APAC region for first use due to its unique climate. 

For water efficiency, moving to air cooling from evaporative cooling would significantly reduce water use. Although free air cooling in Southeast Asia is generally challenging due to the region’s hot and humid climate, researchers in Singapore have evaluated its feasibility in tropical conditions and found it effective for certain workloads with temperatures up to 37°C.

However, as AI workloads increase and more GPUs are deployed, which have higher heat rejection, closed loop liquid cooling offers a more efficient way to manage heat and reduce energy consumption. Depending on the scenario, this might include direct-to-chip or immersion cooling for new deployments, or active rear-door cooling that can be retrofitted into existing data centres or installed in new ones. 
 
Another option to reduce power usage is upgrading existing IT equipment, such as integrating newer, energy-efficient servers, switching fully to solid-state storage drives, or using more energy-efficient power supplies. Whether through equipment upgrades or liquid cooling, increasing energy efficiency reduces energy demand and lowers operational costs. 

Data centres can tap into Southeast Asia’s vast renewable energy potential, utilising solar and hydroelectric power to directly reduce their reliance on the fossil fuels from the grid.

Renewables cut carbon emissions, can stabilise energy costs and support sustainability goals. However, the ability to procure renewables directly from energy producers varies across Southeast Asia, depending on each country’s market liberalisation. 

Instead of fully relying on the power grid, another option is to consider onsite power generation or storage to ensure a stable and independent energy supply. This is practiced in several parts of Southeast Asia, with dedicated power plants located within top industrial parks to complement the power grid. 

Pairing this with a battery energy storage system (BESS) allows storing excess energy generated during low-demand periods for use during peak times, enhancing reliability and grid independence.

When used with the grid, a BESS can be utilised for peak power shaving to lower power costs during on-peak times. Moreover, it can serve as a power backup in place of diesel generators for enhanced reliability and significantly reducing grid dependency for short duration grid outages. 

Water management is becoming an increasingly important focus, particularly in the APAC region. Factors such as climate change, population growth and industrial demands create an opportunity for industries, including data centres, to collaborate on sustainable water solutions. 

Data centres are uniquely positioned to participate proactively in conserving water, working with communities, governments and industry stakeholders to develop innovative methods to ensure sustainable water management.

Data centres can significantly reduce their reliance on water resources by adopting efficient cooling technologies, such as air-cooling systems over evaporative cooling for heat rejection. When designed effectively, these approaches can offer substantial water savings with only minimal impact on energy requirements. 

The data centre industry can create more resilient systems that benefit their operations and the broader community through partnerships and forward-thinking strategies. Organisations prioritising water efficiency contribute to their sustainability goals and the equitable use of this critical resource across all sectors. 

This collaborative approach highlights the potential for innovation and industry teamwork to solve water management challenges and ensure future growth is balanced with environmental responsibility. Together, we can build a more sustainable future while supporting the needs for data centre infrastructure. 

Not all data centres will run intensive AI workloads. Traditional CPU-bound processing is expected to make up the lion’s share of data centre workloads in the foreseeable future. This means increased software efficiency will play a pivotal role in reducing overall energy consumption and enhancing the sustainability of data centres. 

Green computing plays a key role here by offering innovative solutions to optimise processor use and reduce environmental impact. The idea is to use software techniques to lower the computational demands of applications, allowing more applications to run on the same hardware to maximise data centre capacity. 

Virtualising servers and consolidating workloads for data centres have traditionally been easy ways to reduce the number of physical machines needed. Software optimisation, application modernisation and computational offload offer further avenues to reduce the computational demands of applications. 

Beyond that, “green software” is being explored. This involves energy-efficiency and carbon-aware software designed to minimise energy consumption. Combined with better resource distribution across servers, AI model optimisation and computational offload, it can further reduce energy use and IT costs. 

The power landscape for data centres is rapidly evolving, with innovations happening across multiple fronts. From the adoption of liquid cooling and energy-efficient hardware to the integration of renewable energy and battery storage systems, data centre operators are actively working to reduce their grid dependency while improving sustainability.

Coupled with advances in green computing and software optimisation, these developments paint an encouraging picture for Southeast Asia's data centre future, promising a more sustainable and resilient digital infrastructure that can support the region's growing digital economy. 
 
Chi Ling is the vice-president of real estate and site development at EdgeConneX, a global hyperlocal to hyperscale data centre solutions provider