Singapore has one of the world’s densest data centre capacities: Josephine Teo

SINGAPORE - Singapore has one of the world’s densest data centre capacities, but there is still room for more growth as it sees artificial intelligence playing a prominent role in its economy, said Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo.

“If you look at our data centre capacity relative to the size of gross domestic product and compare it with, say, Japan or China, then actually we have way more,” she said. 

“Take Japan, for example, it has a population that is maybe 20 times the size of Singapore’s, its GDP is maybe 10 times the size of Singapore’s, but actually if you look at their data centre capacity, I don’t think it is more than 1½ times the size of Singapore’s… So if you do that comparison across different jurisdictions, then Singapore has one of the densest data capacities.” 

Mrs Teo, who is also the Minister-in-charge of Smart Nation and Cybersecurity, was speaking at a fireside chat moderated by Fortune executive editor Clay Chandler during the American media company’s Brainstorm AI Singapore event on July 30. 

When asked about Singapore’s resource constraints and the problem of data centres consuming too much energy, she said that while the Government does not want to limit growth as AI is a prominent technology supporting the entire economy, more demand and workloads will soon be placed on data centres in Singapore. 

There are currently 1.4 gigawatts of computing capacity across more than 70 data centres in the Republic. In comparison, Japan has 251 data centres, while China has 449, according to data from Statista. 

In May, the Government announced that

at least 300MW of data centre capacity will be added in the next few years,

with an additional 200MW allocated specifically for operators using green energy options.

“The question is how do we do it while also being able to fulfil our commitments to the net-zero pathway, as well as being responsible in sustainability,” Mrs Teo said, adding that tropical data centre standards could be one solution. 

In June 2023, Singapore

launched one of the world’s first standards

for optimising energy efficiency for data centres in tropical-climate countries. The standard aims to help data centres gradually increase their operating temperatures to 26 deg C or more, allowing them to benefit from cooling energy savings of between 2 per cent and 5 per cent for every 1 deg C increase.

Mrs Teo noted: “A more sustainable way to the future is to move towards greener data centres.

“This is either through operations becoming more energy efficient, or the source of energy that is used to power the data centres will have to become greener.”

Mrs Teo also noted that if the size of Singapore’s gross domestic product is considered an indication of the breadth and depth of activities taking place in the country, and that every single one of those activities produces a data point, then the data generated may not be as small as previously thought.

She was responding to a question from Mr Chandler, who likened data to the “oil of the digital age”, about how Singapore can compete with AI superpowers such as the United States and China. 

“There are also ways in which the training of AI models need not necessarily be dependent on a very large amount of data or the data being directly available to you,” Mrs Teo said. 

“There are techniques in privacy enhancing technologies that will allow, for example, federated learning to take place – you may not be in possession of the data, but it doesn’t prevent you from being able to extract the learning from that data.”

Fortune’s event, which runs at The Ritz Carlton, Millenia Singapore till July 31, is expected to host about 500 attendees, including senior executives and start-up founders, as well as those from government agencies. 

Correction note: This article has been edited for clarity.