The Johor government will no longer approve applications for the construction of Level 1 and Level 2 data centres that use up to 50 million litres of water per day (MLD), according to a report by the New Straits Times. This is high water consumption equivalent to the needs of 25 million people per day. From now on, only Level 3 and Level 4 data centres that use up to 0.2 MLD will be approved.
The process of approving data centres will be handled by the Johor Data Centre Development Coordinating Committee, which will take into account six main criteria. These criteria are water and energy consumption, environmental impact, water and energy efficiency, availability of fibre optic infrastructure, alternative water sources and cooling systems that reduce water dependence.
In addition, the use of sustainable technologies such as reducing carbon emissions and complying with green building index standards will also be taken into account by this committee. So far, Johor has approved 51 data centre projects worth RM182.96 billion.
The ban on the construction of Level 1 and Level 2 data centres comes after last week Johor asked investors to postpone the construction of data centres for 18 months due to water shortages in Johor. Although Johor used 6.1 (MLD) for data centres last year, this is predicted to increase to 384 MLD by 2030.
