Singapore announces launch of green data centre initiative

WITH data centres being the core infrastructure for Singapore's Smart Nation initiative, the government on Monday announced the launch of a green data centre innovation programme (GDCIP) to raise energy efficiency of the data centre industry in the country.

In a survey of data centres in 2012, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) found that the 10 largest data centre operators in Singapore account for energy consumption equivalent to 130,000 typical HDB households. An energy efficiency improvement of 20 per cent in the existing stock of commercial data centres in Singapore is estimated to be capable of yielding combined annual savings in excess of S$34 million.

As part of this initiative, the IDA has secured collaborations with Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei and IBM. This collaboration will help in prototyping short- and long-term solutions for more energy-efficient data centres.