LETTER TO EDITOR
Date: 28 OCTOBER 2024 (MONDAY)
DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE APPROACHES FOR DATA CENTRES & WERII SECTOR
Malaysia’s policies are not holistically streamlined to mitigate environmental challenges faced by Water, Energy and Resource Intensive Industries (WERII). When the Federal and state governments open their doors for investment into WERII sector, they must also ensure there are adequate measures to keep this sector in a sustainable operation.
Data centre is becoming an emerging set up to boost global shift towards a more sustainable economy as well as enhancing digitalisation. However, data centres are known to be an energy and water intensive operation. By 2030, it is projected that Malaysia will have more than 2000 MW (megawatt) capacity for data centres. This is a sizable chunk of electricity demand. In addition to that, every 100MW of data centre averagely will require 4 million liters per day (MLD) of water supply for cooling purpose. Thus, water demand for data centres may exceed 80 MLD by 2030.
Will this industry pose a huge risk to our water and electricity sector?
According to 2023 official data, the non-revenue water (NRW – treated water that is loss in the water supply system) stands at 5,524 MLD or 34.6% for Peninsular Malaysia and Labuan. Selangor (including Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya) recorded 1450 MLD or 27.8% and Johor 485 MLD or 25% of NRW in the same year. These 2 states will attract most of the data centres and reducing their respective NRW will supplement the water demand needed by data centres. According to NRW target by Suruhanjaya Perkhidmatan Air Negara (SPAN), it is expected to drop to 25% in the year 2025 which is the same target that was missed in the year 2020. Therefore, it is timely that the federal government reactivates NRW reduction task force and strictly implement NRW reduction action plan that we championed a decade ago.
Cooling is a vital component to keep the data centre operating at optimal condition and water is the main fluid utilised for this purpose. Global data centres driven efficiency data indicates that Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) varies and an old data based on 2011 study points to 1.8liter / kWh water usage for cooling. The complexity arises when water use from different source and type of water resources including reuse and recycling of water.
As for the energy guzzling part of data centre, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is used to measure the efficient operation of data centres. In Malaysia, the PUE is set at 1.6 compared to Singapore at a stricter level of 1.3. Thus, there is room for improvement for PUE in Malaysia. As more data centres starts to operate in Malaysia, it will increase the baseload profile for energy demand in Peninsular Malaysia particularly. The nature of data centre operation is 24/7 operation and any attempt to link up to renewable energy (RE) also poses risk. RE has intermittent risk and it is not a reliable baseload supply unless substantial investment are done to improve energy storage facilities that can guarantee a continuous RE supply for data centes which comes with high capital expenditure investment. At the moment, fossil fuel power plants are on stand-by for RE power plants to operate in Malaysia. Therefore, this situation is making current RE operation not truly fossil fuel free.
Some of the suggestion that CWES and AWER would like to highlight to the government to assist this fast growing sector to have seamless operation in Malaysia are as below:
i. Legally binding and voluntary approaches to increase energy efficiency of data centres must be developed. This includes keeping PUE data on par with regional peers;
ii. Develop future proofing sustainable policies and guidelines tailor-made to data centres and other WERII sectors;
iii. Water efficiency can be mandated using Water Services Industry Act 2006 (WSIA). This can include water reuse, recycling and optimisation of water use for cooling. This approaches can be tailor-made for data centres and other WERII sectors; and
iv. Improving alternative sustainable and durable cooling and coolant technology is another important areas of research and development that may have cross cutting sectoral benefits.
It is utmost important that approaches derived and undertaken by the government to encourage data centres and other WERII sectors must not include any attempt to socialise the cost of getting new investors to the economy and the people. Cost socialisation is not a sustainable trend.
Piarapakaran S.
President,
Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia (AWER) &
Chief Executive Officer,
Centre for Water and Energy Sustainability (CWES)
