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Energy-efficient data centres in an AI-driven world
Among energy-efficient technologies, flash storage – which can cut total data centre power consumption by around 20% – can play a key role in helping Singapore achieve its carbon reduction targets alongside its AI ambitions
By Nathan Hall, Vice President and General Manager, Asia-Pacific and Japan at Pure Storage
As Southeast Asia’s largest data centre hub and the sixth largest globally, Singapore hosts over 70 data centres that fuel the region’s digital economy in the AI era. However, the sheer scale of this infrastructure and the shift to notoriously energy-intensive AI workloads are now placing an unsustainable demand on the nation’s resources.
Nathan Hall
Globally, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that electricity demand from data centres will more than double to around 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030. In Singapore alone, data centres already account for around 7 per cent of the nation’s total electricity consumption.
It is reassuring that Singapore is taking a proactive stance to address the energy challenge by building a new 700MW low-carbon data centre park on Jurong Island. The development, which complements the Green Data Centre Roadmap, will allow operators to capitalise on Jurong Island’s robust ecosystem, including access to emerging low-carbon energy sources. However, to ensure this new 700MW capacity is truly “green”, we must look beyond just the facility and inside the IT stack.
Among energy-efficient technologies, flash storage – which can cut total data centre power consumption by around 20% – can play a key role in helping Singapore achieve its carbon reduction targets alongside its AI ambitions. Prioritising hardware efficiency creates a virtuous cycle: it directly cuts the power load, which in turn reduces the cooling burden and shrinks the physical footprint, allowing Singapore to maximise the compute and AI output of every new megawatt.
In fact, the government must go one step further and consider a new metric for data centre efficiency – measuring energy use per unit of data stored (terabytes per watt) – as a basis for regulation. Setting standards on watts per terabyte will help drive adoption of technologies that maximise data stored per watt of power.
Singapore needs data centres, but without the high environmental impact. We must demand higher efficiency from data storage because the growth of data centres risks imposing an unsustainable strain on energy and water resources while increasing carbon emissions.
Singapore has an opportunity to take the lead in mandating and adopting environmentally friendly and energy efficient solutions as it positions itself as a global AI hub. Balancing the growing energy demands of AI adoption with societal and environmental considerations ensures that Singapore’s data centres support economic growth while minimising impact on communities and the planet.
