PETALING JAYA: The Guidelines for Sustainable Development of Data Centres issued by the Investment, Trade and Industry Ministry (Miti) contains a metric called Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), which is defined as the ratio of the data centre water consumption divided by the energy consumed by IT equipment.
In the guidelines, Miti said project proponents should avoid water stressed areas by taking into account the Water Stress Index (WSI) of the proposed site, which should be less than 0.8 in Peninsular Malaysia.
WSI measures water scarcity at a specific level, and is calculated as a ratio of total annual water withdrawals or consumption versus the total available water resources.
A number that is closer towards zero denotes little or no stress, while a number that is closer to one suggests impending severe water scarcity.
“The organisation may utilise the reclaimed or reuse water for their operation, and the recommended design WUE is 2.2m3/MWh (megawatt-hour) or lower, and the organisation shall continuously monitor and disclose the actual WUE in their annual sustainability report and work to improve the WUE of 2.0m3/MWh or lower from the baseline design WUE value over the next 10 years,” added Miti.
When contacted, major data centre player NTT said it is already managing its water footprint by moving away from evaporative cooling methods, such as adopting to Liquid Immersion Cooling (LIC) and Direct Contact Liquid Cooling (DCLC).
‘’At NTT, we are guided by the principles of universal wellness, and we view water as a valuable resource. We are placing the emphasis on leveraging innovative alternative cooling technologies with our breakthrough deployments of LIC and DCLC technologies.
“We have taken the decision to not use evaporative cooling in Malaysia. Instead, our global standard design for new data centre projects features a closed loop water cooling system, where the water in the loop is recirculated.
“With this new system, water remains within the system, eliminating the need for continuous replenishment and further reinforces our commitment to sustainable water management,” added NTT.
Wong Weng Yew, founder and managing Director of Open DC Sdn Bhd, another significant industry player, said by combining advanced air-cooling methods, chilled-water configurations and emerging direct-to-chip technologies, it is possible to optimise performance while significantly reducing water dependency.
“Emerging innovations, such as closed-loop liquid cooling, offer even greater potential by continually recirculating coolant and eliminating the need for fresh water.
“Microsoft, for example, has deployed such systems, saving over 125 million litres of water per data centre annually.
“Broader industry data further demonstrates the shift: more than half of global facilities now adopt waterless systems and nearly 90% of operators with closed-loop cooling report no requirement to monitor water use.
“These trends underscore a clear pathway for the sector to reduce environmental impact without compromising reliability,” he told The Star.
“We are not simply building data centres to meet today’s demand, we are future-proofing them to support businesses, communities and the environment for generations to come.”
