Just as e-commerce transformed logistics a decade ago, AI is set to do the same to the data centre industry. Global data centre capacity is expected to double in the next five years, with APAC growing at a 20% CAGR to 24,800 MW by 2028, supporting over US$500bn in investments.
Across the Asia-Pacific region, one company has positioned itself at the forefront of this market: real asset manager ESR Group, which is one of the largest listed real estate investment managers globally and more specifically, ESR Data Centre team. The company uses its expertise in logistics and industrial real estate development to meet the needs of cloud providers, hyperscalers and enterprises. ESR raised over US$2bn from investors, including some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth and pension funds, to develop greenfield and brownfield data centre projects across the APAC region. Now, ESR has more than US$154bn in assets under management and more than 2,000 employees across the region. Clearly the company has the scale, local knowledge and resources to execute complex data centre projects.
Diarmid Massey, CEO of Data Centres, ESR Group, enjoys building data centres and rolling out the infrastructure needed for the connectivity of the future.
"There's an obvious synergy between building logistics, tech parks and using that skill set and ability to build data centres," Diarmid explains. "It comes back to the key strengths of the company - the sourcing of land and development opportunities, permitting, planning and working with local contractors."
The company is currently executing on an initial pipeline of over 575 megawatts of committed data centre sites, with plans to expand to over two gigawatts across approximately 18 projects. Key markets of focus include Australia, Japan, Korea, India and Malaysia.
ESR: A competitive edge with a sustainable core
ESR is committed to its ambitious sustainability goals, designing and delivering for LEED Gold certification across all assets and achieving net zero data centres powered by 100% renewable energy by 2040, with an interim target of 75% by 2030.
ESR’s strategy is built on three pillars:
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Sustainable construction
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Operational efficiency
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Renewable energy
These principles – aligned with the ESR Group ESG framework – guide the company in developing Green Data Centres and are integrated throughout each project phase.
During operation, ESR implements policies for sustainable management and retrofitting, continuously optimising Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) to enhance efficiency.
"We prioritise the use of best-in-class energy efficient MEP systems, targeting LEED Gold certification and install a comprehensive energy monitoring scheme to optimise the performance during operation,” explains Cindy Nguyen, who leads sustainability initiatives for ESR Data Centres business. “We are also working closely with our JV partners and customers to improve the IT and MEP equipment efficiency."
Innovative approaches to sustainability are being explored across ESR's portfolio and water consumption is a key focus area.
“In our design, we maximise the cycles of concentration in cooling towers, which means recycling water multiple times within the cooling system before discharge to reduce overall water use. Our water metering scheme also allows for monitoring and optimisation of water consumption during operation. In areas facing water scarcity, we adopt water-free cooling systems to prioritise the essential needs of local communities while ensuring the operational resilience of our data centres.”
The use of liquid cooling to support high density workloads is also developing rapidly in APAC.
“There are a range of products from 40kW per rack to 120kW per rack that are leveraging liquid cooling. Cold plate liquid cooling is the most common solution that we are seeing in the market. But the chilled water temperatures and weights specified vary considerably between workloads and suppliers,” explains Richard Mills, Head of Design and Development, Data Centres, ESR Group. “As the market is still developing we also need to maintain flexibility to ensure that we can support a full range of products and requirements for our customers.”
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