Singapore’s data centre industry moving towards decarbonisation
Red Dot Analytics (‘RDA’) Pte Ltd and leading Singapore-headquartered environmental, social, and governance (‘ESG’) FinTech firm Hashstacs Pte Ltd (‘STACS’) have entered a strategic partnership to provide a holistic platform to transform Singapore’s data centre industry and shape a sustainable digital future. The partnership will be jointly powered by RDA’s platform and STACS’ ESGpedia, which powers the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (‘MAS’) Greenprint ESG Registry.
The companies will collectively develop an end-to-end solution for data centre operators and owners to improve data centre energy efficiency, decarbonize their operations, and achieve the necessary ESG financing for their sustainability journey.
Singapore’s data centre industry was reported to consume about 7 per cent of the city-state’s electricity and would rise to double digits by 2030 in its current trajectory. As a result, a moratorium has been put in place on new data centre projects in 2019 and would be lifted with the requirement for the new data centres to prove that they are sustainable, in collaboration with home-grown technologies in Singapore.
Regulatory push in the sector to decarbonise and achieve green certifications
Earlier this year, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Economic Development Board (EDB) launched a pilot scheme for the sector, with the aim of allowing the “calibrated and sustainable growth” of data centres in Singapore. As part of the pilot, the Singapore authorities are seeking out applications with innovative proposals and specify that the proposals must all have a power usage effectiveness (‘PUE’) of less than 1.3 and have a Platinum certification under Singapore’s BCA-IMDA Green Mark for New Data Centre (‘GM-NDC’) criteria.
Aligned with this target, RDA will empower the data centre industry on its journey to reach PUE of less than 1.3 and ESGpedia, as a central registry of holistic data and certifications, will guide data centres to achieve the Green Mark certification.
Common registry of carbon emission and certifications for data centre industry
RDA provides enterprise-level offerings, i.e., DCWiz platform, leveraging its award-winning technologies in digital twin and artificial intelligence, to make data centre infrastructures more sustainable, empowering businesses with the means to track and optimize greenhouse gas emissions in their lifecycle management more accurately.
Backed by decade-long research at Nanyang Technological University (‘NTU’) Singapore, RDA pioneers in “cognitive digital twin” technology to create a virtual replica of a real-world system that can take in large amounts of data to simulate the effect of any changes to a system, before they are put into the physical system.
RDA’s DCWiz digitalizes data centre operations and forecasts how much energy will be consumed using predictive AI-powered models. Through technical integration with ESGpedia, this partnership provides data centres with greater visibility of their ESG data and carbon emissions via a common, standardized platform, which in turn also enables financial institutions to make better ESG financing decisions and effectively monitor their green portfolio on an ongoing basis, overall facilitating the mobilisation of green capital for the sector.
“For too long now, rapid technological innovation and changing consumer behaviours have come at the expense of the environment,” Red Dot Analytics chief scientist Dr. Wen Yonggang says.
“RDA can solve one part of the puzzle and in working with STACS ESGpedia, we hope to strengthen our value proposition by taking our clients one step further in their sustainability journeys.”
Dr. Yonggang is also a Professor and President’s Chair of Computer Science and Engineering at NTU Singapore.
Benjamin Soh, Co-Founder and Managing Director at STACS, said: “We are delighted to be working with Red Dot Analytics through ESGpedia to enable Singapore’s data centre industry towards decarbonisation, aligned with the nation’s goal of achieving net zero by 2050. With Singapore being the long-standing data centre hub of Asia Pacific, accounting for 60 per cent of data centre capacity in the region, the adoption of such green digital technologies can ensure that Singapore maintains its competitiveness, while at the same time, help address concerns of environmental sustainability within the sector.”
