[SINGAPORE] Data centres could drive the next wave of disruption and green industrialisation as rising demand may generate considerable incentives to innovate, said panellists discussing the energy transition.
Electricity usage in data centres is set to double soon, noted Yoon Young Kim, cluster president for Singapore and Brunei at Schneider Electric, driven by the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
In April, the International Energy Agency estimated that electricity consumption at data centres made up 1.5 per cent of global demand in 2024. This number could rise to close to 3 per cent by 2030.
“The intensity of demand is quite high,” said Yoon at the Sustainability Impact Dialogue jointly organised by The Business Times and UOB, adding that using AI or ChatGPT will consume 10 times more energy than normal Googling.
This could spawn new technologies to help cool data centres more quickly, he added.
Concurring, fellow panellist Nat Bullard, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Halcyon, said high demand levels – not just in output, but also service quality – could spur “a willingness to pay to make things work”.
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“I think that we’ll see an interplay between innovative financing models, a lot of new technology, and a lot of new ways of conceiving of these assets as something that can be responsive to the grid, as opposed to always on,” he said.
“And a place, too, where – as always – some smart policy interventions can make a difference.”
He added: “I would be very interested if it was me and I was doing an open call. I would say: ‘Find me innovative business models and technical models for cooling’, as we think about the region – not just 400 million new mini splits for South-east Asia.”
He also said that Singapore has been a “great leader” in doing this on a district level and building it into the thought process.
For example, China’s consumer goods trade-in programme over the summer – where people swapped old air-conditioners for newer, more efficient ones – had a material impact on electricity demand, he noted.
“That is something that could be done as an intervention into the existing stock everywhere, and also as a new set of standards going forward somewhere else.”
It is also a way to divide the burden while sharing the benefit of doing things more efficiently with lower capital outlay, he added.
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