Data centres plan to green operations with hydrogen power

SINGAPORE – Data centres here are turning to hydrogen power, now that new sustainability criteria are in place to ensure that the growth of server farms is consistent with Singapore’s commitments to reach net-zero carbon emission by 2050. 

Traditional data centres require a lot of electricity to run servers and other hardware to store, process and transit large amounts of organisations’ data, such as for cyber security, cloud computing and e-commerce. The computing equipment generates a lot of heat, making energy and water-guzzling cooling systems necessary.

Keppel Data Centres told The Straits Times that it is looking to build a floating data centre park with its partners, which will be about 35ha in size and could be ready in phases from 2026.

It is considering using liquefied and piped gaseous hydrogen, which could be imported from countries in the region. In the longer term, the company would be looking to power the facility with green hydrogen.

The company said that sustainable practices at its data centre are in step with it big-tech clients’ focus on ensuring net-zero emissions, or to become carbon-negative. Carbon-negative companies generate less greenhouse gases than they help remove from the environment, such as through carbon offset projects.

Hydrogen is considered a cleaner fuel as it produces no planet-warming carbon dioxide when burned. However, it is only considered green if the hydrogen is created in a way that generates zero emissions, such as through renewable energy like solar.

The Government placed a moratorium on new data centres on state land in 2019. New criteria that took effect in July 2022, when the moratorium was lifted, include greener operations, such as using more sustainable energy, more efficient cooling methods, and greater energy efficiency.  

These requirements kicked in under a pilot for new data centres that is expected to have a total allocated capacity of around 60 megawatts (MW). The Government will announce successful applicants by June 2023.

Keppel declined to say if its offshore data centre is under this pilot programme.

Singapore had more than 70 operational data centres by 2021, which account for about 7 per cent of the country’s electricity consumption.

Empyrion DC, owned by investment firm Seraya Partners, has submitted a proposal to build a data centre powered by low-carbon hydrogen.

Seraya Partners said it intends to have hydrogen supplied to a Singapore power-generating facility to generate electricity that is fed into the national grid, which its data centre will plug into.

United States-based digital infrastructure firm Equinix announced in September 2022 that it is collaborating with the National University of Singapore to test hydrogen fuel cells as a power source for data centres in Singapore.

Hydrogen fuel cells produce electricity through a chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen. They can be used to power electric cars – a tank of 5.6kg of hydrogen can be converted into 100kW of electricity, sufficient to travel around 700km.

Depending on a data centre’s size, a network of hydrogen fuel cells, or much larger ones about 100 to 1,000 times the size of a vehicle fuel cell, would be needed to supply 10MW to 100MW of power.