From Bloomberg, September 25:
- Growth of data centers has already pushed up energy demand
- Asia lags world in infrastructure investment, ADB says
BlackRock Inc. sees huge growth opportunities in Asia for infrastructure to support a boom in artificial intelligence that’s also spurring energy and water demand.
“The need for data centers over the next five years is going to be double what is currently in the markets,” Brad Kim, BlackRock’s head of Asia Pacific diversified infrastructure, said at a media briefing on Wednesday. “Water infrastructure will need to almost double over the next five years,” he said, referring to cooling mechanisms, “and overall energy consumption will increase by about 50% in the next 10 years across Asia Pacific.”
Globally, the surge in electricity demand is outstripping the available power supply in many parts of the world, leading to growing concerns of outages and price increases for the most data center dense regions. Asia is no exception, with tech companies rushing to secure long-term contracts to power the data farms that feed artificial intelligence programs.
Southeast Asia in particular has been attracting investment in recent months, with the likes of Amazon Inc. and Microsoft Corp. pledging billions of dollars to build data centers in the region.
Still, Asia lags the rest of the world in terms of infrastructure investment, requiring an estimated $1.7 trillion a year through 2030 to maintain its growth momentum, according to the Asian Development Bank. While government reforms could bridge up to 40% of the region’s infrastructure gap, the rest would have to come from the private sector, the multilateral lender said....
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