The digital economy is a power-hungry business underpinned by a rapidly growing data centre economy. Driving everything from digital transformation, cloud, AI and 5G, data centres are popping up and expanding across Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. Southeast Asia’s digitised economy depends on these gigantic operations. However, fears now abound that this may come at a cost.
The IT industry has one of the world’s most significant carbon footprints. It is estimated that by 2026, the industry could use 20% of all electricity produced and emit up to 5.5% of the world’s carbon emissions, which is more than the total emissions of most countries. Data centres play a critical role in the IT industry, and, therefore, must also own up to their own sizable carbon footprint.
Data centres hold the keys to a kingdom of untapped innovation and technical efficiency, but this must not come at the cost of the environment and carbon emissions. Both technology and business leaders have a chance to improve their environmental impact by making conscious choices about where and how their data is housed and the mark left by its carbon footprint.
Transition and transformation
For most Southeast Asia-based business leaders, data centres sit in the background of their day-to-day concerns and are largely relegated to the domain of IT teams and partners. However, their importance for a business operations and future success cannot be understated.
Data centres, especially hyperscale, play home to the infrastructure of the world’s biggest public cloud providers: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. As a result, they are the home to vast quantities of business data and workloads, as many rapidly transition from heavy, legacy in-house infrastructures.
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Thanks to the innovation in data centres and public cloud, businesses across Southeast Asia have been able to rapidly digitise their operations; embrace hybrid working and new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT); and develop their cryptocurrency expertise.
The benefits are insurmountable. However, they come as global and regional companies are increasingly committing to carbon net-zero emissions. Given that data centres consume an estimated two per cent of global energy, improving their sustainability and carbon output has become a high priority for commercial customers and technology partners.
No business wants to hamper or undo its digital transformation and cloud adoption. However, given the growing importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments, demands for data centres to improve their carbon footprints will only intensify. And there are several ways to make this happen.
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Green and cool
Within Southeast Asia, Singapore is making some of the biggest strides towards improving data centre sustainability. As of last year, companies looking to set up data centres in Singapore will have to meet new criteria, including ensuring the use of sustainable energy and more efficient cooling methods.
These two focuses are critically important in tropical environments such as those found in the region. Data centres in hot countries such as Singapore consume more energy as they need to power cooling systems that ensure the data centre servers operate within a safe temperature range. Naturally, the hotter the country, the more power is required to keep the environment cool.
As mentioned, renewable energy is one key avenue for building more carbon-friendly data centres. This is not always necessarily in the data centre operator’s control. Although some providers may generate power on-site using renewables or gas, the vast majority will tap into the local energy grid at the site location. Though governments in the region are progressively shifting towards renewable energy models, this will not be a short-term solution for those looking to ramp up their ESG.
On the other hand, innovation in precision liquid cooling technology is something that is rapidly advancing at present. The technology is fast becoming integral for the performance of high-density computing environments, which are also increasingly moving to the edge as latency becomes a higher and higher priority. Simply put, whether data centres are looking for the most robust and efficient cooling solution for today or future-proofing for tomorrow, precision liquid cooling is quickly cementing itself as the go-to solution.
Today, data centres can leverage transformative technologies that use precision immersion cooling that uses dielectric fluid rather than power-intensive air conditioning.
Liquid cooling is long-established and has become the standard in high-performance computing (HPC) applications. In contrast, air cooling has largely been preferred in large data centre facilities. However, we are now seeing this situation change rapidly as the adoption of liquid cooling accelerates. Indeed, the global data centre liquid cooling market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 24.8% to US$6.4 billion ($8.51 billion) by 2027.
Utilising advanced cooling mechanism brings enhanced energy efficiency, a significant reduction in carbon emissions and a substantially positive impact on environmental sustainability. Southeast Asian leaders now have the opportunity to redefine data centre standards, set a new bar of environmental responsibility and maintain a successful, energy-efficient business.
Dr Kelley Mullick is the vice-president of technology advancement and alliances at Iceotope
