Greening data centres

This report by Ember examines the energy demands and decarbonisation pathways for data centres in the ASEAN region, focusing on the intersection of AI-driven growth, tropical cooling requirements, and the availability of renewable energy.

• AI-driven data centres have distinct operational demands compared to traditional facilities, requiring specialised infrastructure such as higher-density racks, high power capacity, and liquid cooling. Total power consumption is split between IT load (servers, storage, and network switches) and facility load (lighting, cooling, and electrical equipment).
• Cooling is a primary driver of energy consumption, particularly in ASEAN's tropical climate. Cooling alone is estimated to account for 39% of a data centre's total energy use. Efficiency can be improved through air flow management—where increasing operating temperature set points by one degree Celsius can save 4.3% to 9.8% of cooling electricity—and immersion cooling, which can reduce power consumption by approximately 40% compared to traditional methods.
• Current government renewable energy targets for grids serving data centre hotspots are not reducing emission factors rapidly enough. For example, Singapore's grid emission factors are projected to decline by 4.9% (from 0.48 to 0.45 tCO2e per MWh) between 2019 and 2030, while Indonesia's JAMALI grid is projected to drop 9.4% (from 0.78 to 0.70 tCO2e per MWh).
• Five ASEAN data centre hubs could meet at least 30% of their 2030 electricity demand using grid-based wind and solar power before requiring battery storage. While battery storage is not an immediate barrier, the World Bank forecasts that 10 GW of storage capacity could be realised in ASEAN within three years.
• Software optimisation is emerging as a significant lever for energy efficiency. The AI assistant DeepSeek is cited as being approximately 95% more efficient than traditional AI training methods through software optimisation in training models and hardware utilisation.

APA

Ember (2025). Greening data centres. https://ember-energy.org/chapter/greening-data-centres/

Chicago

Ember. Greening data centres. 2025. https://ember-energy.org/chapter/greening-data-centres/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Ember |title=Greening data centres |date=27 May 2025 |url=https://ember-energy.org/chapter/greening-data-centres/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ember2025greening, author = {{Ember}}, title = {{Greening data centres}}, institution = {Ember}, year = {2025}, month = may, url = {https://ember-energy.org/chapter/greening-data-centres/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }