Speech by SMS Janil Puthucheary at ‘Sustainable Data Centres with Google’

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much to Ms Kate Brandt for the introduction, and for the lecture as well. I’ve been to Google a few times, and every time I come here, I feel like I learn something new — today is no different. Unfortunately, it seems like every time I come here, I’ll have to take a quiz. I thank Google for inviting me here today. It is my pleasure to be with all of you.

Let me pick up from a point that Ms Brandt made in her presentation, which is about AI. Singapore launched our National AI Strategy 2.0 in December last year. NAIS 2.0 sets out our refreshed strategy to propel Singapore as a leader in AI to realise its enormous transformative potential. We are making ambitious investments under NAIS 2.0, including investing up to $500 million to enable access to compute for AI innovation.

The pace of AI development since then has been relentless. AI tech and adoption continue to grow swiftly. Just last month, Google launched a slew of AI products including Veo, a generative AI model that creates videos from text prompts, while OpenAI released GPT-4o. These developments signal the dynamic growth and rapid democratisation of AI. They only reinforce our resolve to harness AI for the Public Good, both for Singapore and the world.

The growth of AI is a striking example of the opportunities data centres enable us to capture. To similarly harness other trends like digitalisation and the growing use of autonomous systems, we must grow the data centre capacity that houses compute powering these trends. Yet with energy and carbon constraints, data centre capacity can only grow by redoubling efforts to make data centres more sustainable.

This challenge is not unique to Singapore. Eventually, all of us — wherever we are around the world — are going to be faced with these constraints. But for us here in Singapore, we’re reaching this point of consideration because of our size and resource constraints. Because of who we are, we are determined to turn these constraints into opportunity: opportunity to innovate, so that we capture value from the growth of data centres while meeting our international climate commitments.

Hence, last year, our Digital Connectivity Blueprint spelled out our intent to map a path for the growth of green data centres and push the sustainability envelope. For that Blueprint, data centres were only one part of the puzzle — there are other elements such as satellite connectivity, subsea cable connectivity, as well as the software that rides on all these things. Our Green Data Centre Roadmap, launched last Thursday, continues this effort.

The Roadmap charts a pathway for the continued and sustainable growth of data centres in Singapore. It supports our ambitions for the digital economy and NAIS 2.0. It does so in two broad ways. Firstly, to accelerate data centres’ energy efficiency and use of green energy. Secondly, to facilitate data centres in catalysing partnerships and fostering collaborative solutions across the wider data centre ecosystem. So the first way is about making data centres better: whether it’s about data centres using first-in-class efficient equipment or refreshing their equipment, the software, the power and water utilisation, and raising the temperature. The second one is about partnerships with solution providers to design and operate data centres more efficiently, with energy suppliers to bring in green energy pathways, and with enterprise end-users to adopt best practices for energy efficiency. In every industry that has had to undergo such shifts, the acceleration of the shift only occurs when everybody in the entire value chain is singing to the same tune. The value chain then starts to shift significantly. We see this already in many industries, so there’s a playbook for this, and we want to apply this to the data centre ecosystem.

There are many actions data centres can take to be more sustainable, even in Singapore’s tropical climate. For example, operating at higher temperatures helps to reduce the energy needed for cooling and makes a data centre more energy-efficient. And Google is already doing so in Singapore, which has contributed to bringing their data centres’ PUE below 1.2. Colocation providers like Digital Realty have also convinced their customers to operate at higher temperatures, and as a result, have realised significant energy savings.

One of my portfolios is to work with the Government Technology Agency to coordinate what we do for IT across government — building products and running the compute and data centre services for Singapore. GovTech too is an early adopter of this approach. I am pleased to share that GovTech has successfully trialled the Tropical Data Centre standard at one of its data centres. Increasing operating temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius and reducing the energy required to operate the data centre cooling infrastructure by 40% on average, while keeping within the IT equipment’s operating temperature range. GovTech is now exploring similarly raising the operating temperature at other data centres. I’m glad that Google has set a standard, and that in the public sector, we have been able to demonstrate our commitment to the sustainable approach in the development of data centres as well.

We will continue to support data centres to be more energy efficient, including by adopting the Tropical Data Centre standard. Data centres can tap on incentives like the Resource Efficiency Grant for Emissions to support upgrading.

However, sustainability is not just the data centres’ responsibility. Data centre end-users have an important role to play to drive sustainability improvements. They can take relatively simple actions like installing energy-efficient IT equipment, such as Energy Star certified equipment, and using techniques like virtualisation to optimise the efficiency of their servers. Just as we’re helping from a facility perspective, we will help end-users on this journey. As announced at this year’s Budget debates, the Energy Efficiency Grant will be extended the data centre sector later this year, to help end-users accelerate their upgrade to more energy-efficient equipment.

We will also play our part. Ultimately, we must and will continue our close partnership with industry to push boundaries for sustainable data centre growth. For example, we are codeveloping new standards to support upgrades. Our Infocomm Media Development Authority and our industry partners are working hard to develop standards for IT energy efficiency and liquid cooling, which are targeted to be introduced by the end of 2025. We will also facilitate the industry in pushing the boundaries to deliver low-carbon energy sources. These include bioenergy, vertical building integrated photovoltaics or building applied photovoltaics, fuel cells with carbon capture, and low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia.

In conclusion, we are committed to growing the data centre sector in Singapore through being more sustainable. I look forward to partnering industry to orchestrate this growth, and deliver the benefits of AI and digitalisation for Singapore and the world.

Thank you.