The data centre industry's breakneck growth in Ireland, the Netherlands and Singapore several years ago had stirred concerns about competition for water and electricity with homes and farms. (File pic)JOHOR BAHRU: After leapfrogging Singapore to become the region's fastest-growing data centre hub, Malaysia is facing intensifying scrutiny as the resources debate that has complicated the industry's growth spreads to emerging Asia.Protests over a data centre complex in Johor - the epicentre of the boom - were the first of their kind in the country.In Selangor, debate about the burden on communities has become politicised."Two years ago, it was just about building capacity," said Cheam Tat Inn, managing director at the Malaysian arm of US data centre operator Equinix."The conversation today is more like, 'How will you use power? Are you looking at renewables?' They want to see how you're going to grow sustainably and responsibly."It is a notable shift for a country - and a region - that has courted hyperscalers hard in a race to secure AI infrastructure investment, offering lower land costs, and affordable power.It puts emerging Asia roughly where developed-market data centre hotspots such as Ireland, the Netherlands and Singapore were several years ago, when the industry's breakneck growth began to stir concerns about competition for water and electricity with homes and farms.Even so, global hyperscalers - in tandem with data centre developers and operators - are pushing forward with massive investments aimed at powering AI services requiring increasingly large amounts of computing capacity, but with a sharpened focus on sustainability to help secure a "social licence" from local communities.Governments are also tightening standards to retain public support.In Johor, China's ZData told Reuters that its data centre operates solely on treated wastewater, and it is finalising a renewable energy deal with Tenaga Nasional Bhd to ease the strain on the electricity grid.Japan's NTT 9432.T said its data centre will employ a closed-circuit cooling system to limit water use, while Bain Capital-backed Bridge Data Centres said solar energy accounts for more than half of the power supply at its operations in the state."Data centres have high abstract support because we're all using more and more data and we all want high speed," said Chris Howard, executive director at con…
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