Data centre – boon or bane?

New industry: Engineers at a data centre. Malaysia has received US$16bil worth of investments for data centres between 2021 and March 2023.

DATA centres have been the flavour of our current times with stocks linked to such activities hitting their highs. The unstoppable digitalisation and “Big Data” wave sweeping over the country means data centres will continue to be the overarching hot topic of conversation.

More specifically, the debate continues afoot on the pros and cons of setting up so many data centres in Malaysia – recent news reports suggest they could rise 10-fold over the next five years from the current total of 47 – and how this would eventually affect several issues of concern such as power usage and economic spillover effects.