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SINGAPORE – Singapore is pushing for green data centers as explosive demand for artificial intelligence puts pressure on energy resources.
The city-state on Thursday unveiled a roadmap for green data centers to support its digital economy ambitions as demand for artificial intelligence and computing grows.
“As the demand for digital and artificial intelligence computing continues to grow, the demand for data center capacity will also grow,” Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information Janil Puthucheary said on Thursday.
The roadmap aims to deliver at least 300 MW of additional capacity in the short term, with additional capacity available through “green energy deployment”.
Plans to provide additional data center capacity include improving the energy efficiency of all data centers in Singapore, deploying energy-efficient IT equipment and providing resource efficiency incentives or subsidies.
“The data center here also taps into 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 industries.
“As the demand for artificial intelligence grows, so does the demand for energy. This puts pressure on the national energy grid, which needs to be managed in the short term.” The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change said in a report Wednesday.
The boom in artificial intelligence has increased the demand for data centers, which store the large amounts of data required to train and deploy artificial intelligence models, making them extremely energy-intensive.
Although the company likes Microsoft and Google The Tony Blair Institute of Global Change said that while the government was investing heavily to increase the use of clean energy, it needed to continue to provide incentives to businesses.
Puthucheary said data centers are the information and communications industry’s “largest source of indirect carbon emissions.” “They account for 82% of Singapore’s ICT sector emissions and 7% of Singapore’s total electricity consumption.”
According to statistics, Singapore is the second largest data center market in Southeast Asia and the sixth largest data center market in Asia Pacific. Data comes from global real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.
According to IMDA, Singapore has more than 70 cloud, enterprise and hosting data centers capable of hosting cloud platforms, digital services and higher-intensity artificial intelligence workloads.
Cushman & Wakefield said that as the global data center market reaches new highs in 2023, power constraints “have prompted data center operators to further evaluate untapped small markets around the world.”
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