Singapore's data centre bet on Jurong Island
Singapore explores petrochemical island for data centres.
Chinese-language daily Lianhe Zaobao reported today that JTC plans to conduct a study of the risks and feasibility of operating data centres on Jurong Island. Since this is now in the public domain, I thought I'll share my thoughts on what some sees as a controversial decision.
Is Jurong Island a good location for the next wave of data centres in Singapore?
What is Jurong Island?
What do we know about Jurong Island? For a start, Jurong Island didn't exist before 1999. It was reclaimed from seven small offshore islands, expanding from the original 10km² to 32km² today.
Today, Jurong island is a restricted area accessed via a single causeway. It hosts over 100 global firms and serves as a petrochemical and energy hub with highly integrated and shared infrastructure.
Things are changing though. According to an EDB press release in 2021, Jurong Island is being repositioned as a Sustainable Energy and Chemicals Park. As you can see from the Google Maps screen capture above, Jurong Island is relatively near to Tanjong Kling, formerly the Singapore Data Centre Park where Equinix SG5 is located.
Needs must
The Zaobao report focused on the inherent dangers of operating mission-critical infrastructure next to petrochemical plants. You know, the non-zero risks in terms of fire, explosions, or hazardous gas leaks. And whether engineering solutions and safety measures can mitigate them safely.
However, the more interesting move to me is the clustering of multiple data centres within the same geographical area, mirroring the underappreciated Singapore Data Centre Park a decade ago.
One complaint I heard about the Singapore Data Centre Park then was how it reduced competitive differentiation. Today, multiple data centre operators happily build next to each other in Johor. Another conventional thinking back then was that data centres must be spaced far apart. Yet modern data centre campuses often have two or more buildings in the same compound.
My point here is this: prevailing attitudes change when more important considerations arise to force a choice. In the above examples, availability of power and speed-to-market won the day.
The road to sustainable data centres
So what makes Jurong special? One would be the availability of land for immediate construction, though there isn't that much of it.
To me, Jurong Island's real appeal lies in its potential access to clean energy, likely through hydrogen imports in the future. Four hydrogen-ready power plants with a combined capacity of up to 2,400MW are currently under construction or planned there. This positions Jurong Island as a strategic location for Singapore's energy transition and offers a pathway to truly sustainable data centres.
Given Singapore's unwavering commitment to sustainable data centres, as I wrote about recently, Jurong Island might be the only way to enable continued data centre growth with its green commitments. What do you think?
