This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on June 8, 2026 - June 14, 2026

Data centre electricity consumption could reach 945TWh — nearly 3% of projected global electricity use — by 2030 while associated emissions may rise to 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, according to a new report by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) commemorating its 30th anniversary.

“[945 TWh is] nearly triple the combined annual electricity use of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria, together home to more than 650 million people. Producing that much electricity would have a carbon footprint of 399 million tonnes CO2e, requiring 6.7 billion trees grown over 10 years to offset — roughly twice the number of trees in the UK,” says the report.

The report adds that artificial intelligence (AI) is  one of the most significant drivers of data centre growth. 

“In 2025, AI workloads alone accounted for around 20% of total data centre electricity use, and if that share rises to 40% by 2030 as projected, its electricity demand could reach roughly 378 TWh — enough to meet the residential electricity needs of the entire population of Sub-Saharan Africa for over two years.”

The authors also warn that the environmental impact of AI extends beyond electricity consumption and carbon emissions to include significant water use, land requirements and electronic waste (e-waste). The report estimates that the land footprint required for electricity generation could exceed 14,000 sq km as AI adoption expands.

The report also highlights growing concerns about water use, estimating that data centres could consume 9.3 trillion litres annually, and that AI infrastructure could generate up to 2.5 million tonnes — equivalent to discarding 250 Eiffel Towers — of e-waste each year by 2030.

The UNU-INWEH report says there needs to be greater oversight of AI infrastructure, including environmental reporting, resource management and international cooperation to address the unequal distribution of AI’s benefits and environmental costs.

“This matters because ‘low-carbon’ is not automatically ‘low-water’ or ‘low-land’, and evaluating sustainability through a single metric can hide trade-offs and shift burdens onto places already facing water stress or land pressure,” states the report.

MedPlanner Sdn Bhd has launched two AI-powered healthcare solutions, HEMI Health and AskHEMI, expanding its product suite for hospitals, clinicians and patients. The new products join HEMI Teams, the company’s clinical coordination platform, forming a connected ecosystem built on its proprietary Health Medical Intelligence (HEMI) engine.

HEMI Health is an AI medical scribe designed to assist clinicians with documentation. It includes tools for recording clinical reasoning, supporting complaint responses and maintaining records for medicolegal purposes. The platform is available to healthcare professionals in Malaysia and the UK.

AskHEMI is a multilingual AI health assistant for patients and carers. Available on the iOS and Android platforms, it provides health-related information and guidance outside of clinical appointments.

To support its international expansion, MedPlanner has incorporated HEMI Ltd in London to oversee commercial and partnership activities in the UK, Europe and other markets. The company will showcase its products at NHS ConfedExpo in Manchester on June 10 and 11.

Climate technology non-profit organisation TransitionZero has expanded its energy system modelling platform, Scenario Builder, to support multi-country analysis across Southeast Asia. The new capability covers 10 Asean countries and 25 nodes in a single integrated model.

The platform allows users to model cross-border power systems, including electricity generation, transmission and trade flows, across Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines.

TransitionZero says the upgrade is to support Southeast Asia’s preparations for increased cross-border transmission projects and electricity trading. The platform is designed to help energy planners, policymakers and analysts assess regional and national energy scenarios using a shared modelling environment.

The multi-country feature is integrated into Scenario Builder, a cloud-based platform used for long-term capacity expansion and dispatch modelling. TransitionZero says the tool is intended to support planning and investment decisions related to regional grid integration and energy transition projects.

Kaspersky says attacks targeting Android users through near-field communication (NFC) technology rose 188% in the first four months of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier. Its security products blocked 35,600 NFC-related malware attacks between January and April, up from more than 12,300 a year earlier.

According to the cybersecurity company, fraudsters are increasingly using malicious applications to steal payment card information or trick victims into transferring money through contactless payment systems. The attacks often begin with scammers persuading users to install fake applications through messaging platforms.

Kaspersky says a newer form of attack, in which victims are manipulated into making deposits at ATMs using infected smartphones, is becoming more common and can be harder to detect. The company advises users to avoid installing apps from unofficial sources and to be cautious of unsolicited instructions involving banking or payment transactions.

Google is rolling out a new Android security feature designed to help users identify scam calls that impersonate people on their contact list. The feature, called fake call detection, aims to counter a growing number of scams that combine caller ID spoofing with AI-generated voice cloning.

The tool works by verifying whether a call claiming to come from a saved contact is actually being made from that person’s device. If the verification fails, users receive a warning that the caller may be impersonating someone they know.

Google says the feature uses encrypted Rich Communication Services (RCS) technology and operates automatically in the background. It can also be disabled through the Phone by Google app settings.

Fake call detection will be available globally starting June on Android 12 and later devices using the Phone by Google app, beginning with Pixel smartphones.

Standard Chartered has appointed Shebani Baweja as its group chief data officer with immediate effect. Based in Singapore, she will report to Alvaro Garrido, chief operating officer for technology and operations and chief information officer for information security and data.

In her new role, Baweja will lead the bank’s Group Data Office and oversee its data strategy, governance and management. She will also be responsible for advancing the use of data and analytics across the organisation.

Baweja has more than 20 years of experience in data and digital transformation. Since joining Standard Chartered in 2008, she has held senior roles across wealth and retail banking as well as technology and operations. Most recently, she served as chief information security officer for wealth and retail banking and international markets.

AMD has hired Vinay Awasthi as senior vice-president of sales for Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) effective immediately. Based in Singapore, he will oversee the company’s sales strategy and operations across the region.

Awasthi joins AMD from Qualcomm, where he served as senior vice-president and global head of compute sales. Prior to that, he spent 21 years at HP in a range of regional and global leadership roles.

In his new role, Awasthi will focus on customer engagement and partnerships with original equipment manufacturers and channel partners across APJ. He will also support AMD’s growth in cloud computing, enterprise technology, artificial intelligence, commercial and consumer markets.

Tokyo-based developer of service robots RT Corp’s food-picking collaborative robot Foodly demonstrating its abilities at a food processing technology expo in Tokyo, Japan

Rakuten Kobo offers a range of e-readers designed for readers seeking a dedicated reading experience away from smartphones and tablets. Its current line-up includes the Kobo Libra Colour, Kobo Clara Colour and Kobo Clara BW.

The Kobo Libra Colour is the company’s flagship colour e-reader and one of its most popular models. It features a 7in colour E Ink display, an ergonomic design with page-turn buttons and note-taking capabilities that allow users to write directly on ebooks and documents using a compatible stylus.

For readers who prefer a more compact device, the Kobo Clara Colour features a 6in colour E Ink display, making it well-suited for illustrated books, comics and colour-coded notes. The Kobo Clara BW offers a similar compact form factor with a 6in black-and-white E Ink display focused on traditional reading.

The Kobo Clara BW is priced from RM599, while the Kobo Clara Colour starts at RM709. The Kobo Libra Colour is available from RM999.

For over half a century, Werner Herzog has challenged, enriched and expanded our understanding of the truth. His films and books have mixed fiction and nonfiction, documentary and drama, reality and imagination. Invariably, Herzog goes beyond the appearance of what is true in search of a higher truth, or what he has often referred to as the “ecstatic truth”.

In The Future of Truth, a great artist ventures an answer to one of humanity’s deepest, most eternal questions. At a time when deepfake AI videos are proliferating and most people have simply thrown up their hands in despair at the ubiquity of what we now know as fake news — not to mention the constant lying and propagandising by certain public figures — Herzog seeks a remedy.

Mixing memoir, history, politics, poetry, science and fierce opinion, he writes with dazzling originality and panache, urging readers to be unflagging and imaginative in the pursuit of truth, endless though the quest may be:

“I don’t think truth is some kind of polestar in the sky that we will one day get to. It’s more like an incessant striving. A movement, an uncertain journey, a seeking full of futile endeavour. But it is this journey into the unknown, into a vast twilit forest, that gives our lives meaning and purpose. It is what distinguishes us from the beasts in the fields.” — Amazon

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