Tech Stories

Issue #71

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See you in Kuala Lumpur

I'll be attending w.media's Malaysia CDC 2025 at the Connexion Conference & Event Centre next Thursday. I'm involved in a panel discussion and fireside chat in the morning, plus a closed-door session in the afternoon. Do say hi and grab a selfie if you see me!

The energy cost of data centres

A lightning strike at a power plant in Melaka earlier this week triggered an automatic shutdown of a 2,242MW facility, leading to localised outages across Peninsular Malaysia. It was rectified within hours, but it got me thinking about the rapid growth of data centres in Malaysia.

Here's what I found out.

Malaysia, currently the world's fifth-largest LNG exporter, could start importing it within four to five years, according to Petronas's head at the Energy Asia conference in June.
Indeed, the country is set to build 50% more gas-fired power by 2030, adding 6-8GW of generation capacity to address growing electricity consumption driven by data centres, according to TNB's CEO.
Total power consumption in Malaysia is on track to increase 30% by 2030. Depending on who you ask, that's an additional 14 - 15 GW of generation capacity needed over the next five years.

What struck me during further digging was how Peninsular Malaysia's energy reserve margin has shrunk from 38.6% at the end of 2022 to 24% as of December 2024. This is still considered healthy, but it explains the urgency to boost power generation capacity.

And rapid developments in data centre land isn't helping. Based on data from JLL and Structure Research, "live" data centre capacity in Malaysia will jump from 522MW in 2025 to 3.53GW in 2029. That's almost three rounds of capacity doubling in four years. The infrastructure implications are staggering.

Singapore's scramble for renewables

Just across the border, Singapore has resisted jumping into the AI race. Instead, it continues working towards establishing itself as a regional sustainability leader.

Before you dismiss the notion of a tiny island nation with limited renewables becoming a regional hub for them, remember that Singapore pulled off this particular sleight-of-hand before. Despite having no oil production, it became Asia's undisputed oil hub with a massive refining, storage, and trading ecosystem. Why not do the same with renewables?

That's why you won't see Singapore spending its limited carbon budget on AI data centres. It knows it can't have its cake and eat it too. And once Singapore cracks the puzzle of piping in renewable energy at competitive rates, it already has a floating, sustainable data centre park ready to scale to 1GW of capacity really quickly.

Finally, it might seem like I'm contrasting Malaysia's "build it now" approach with Singapore's "solve the renewables first" approach. However, I do believe that the pie is big enough for everyone to win - and establish Southeast Asia into a powerhouse for sustainable data centres.

As always, you can reach me by hitting reply.

Regards,
Paul Mah.

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