[Tech Thoughts] Environmental concerns amid rising data center demand in ‘too hot’ PH

MANILA, Philippines – Do a regular Google search on AI technologies and their environmental impact. To say the least, the results are worrisome. 

Now, do a similar query on ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or other chatbots. You would have gotten a similar set of answers — only this time, you’ve used at least five times more power than a regular search. 

In June, a United Nations report found that four Big Tech firms (Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta) saw their indirect carbon emissions rise by 150% from 2020 to 2023 as their AI operations expanded.

To expand, that meant building more data centers — physical facilities housing computers and servers that store, process, and transmit data. 

Data centers are set to increase, not decrease, in the coming years. 

The International Energy Agency, in an April 2025 report, estimated that “electricity demand from data centers worldwide is set to more than double” by 2030, with AI being identified as the most significant driver. 

And in the United States, where new data centers are aggressively being built, communities are already being impacted: water supply is disrupted, and electricity costs grow as new data centers rise.

In the Philippines, there is a growing push for the country to build more data centers, as the government pursues its digital transformation goals. 

We are for digital transformation, but given how we’ve seen the power-hungry nature of data centers, it’s important that before the supposed data center “boom” comes, sustainability and the effect on communities are given the most serious consideration right away. 

Already, our climate targets are a mess, and the building of these data centers — left to their own devices — may just become more part of the problem than a solution to progress.

Currently, there are 35 data centers in the Philippines, according to datacentermap.com. 

And here is an important fact that compounds what could be a big problem if we build data centers without due considerations: it’s hot in the Philippines. 

A Rest of World (RoW) report in November 2025 found that the Philippines is among the 21 countries that operate data centers in some regions where the average annual temperature is above 27°C.

The optimal range is from 18°C to 27°C.

The RoW report highlights Singapore — Southeast Asia’s “digital core” where 72 data centers are located — and quotes PS Lee who leads the Sustainable Tropical Data Center Testbed: “In thermal terms, Singapore is almost ‘permanent peak summer’ for a data center…. Cooling is both technically harder and structurally more energy-intensive here than in most other data center hubs.” 

It’s a challenge that Singapore, through the academia and private firms, is now currently trying to solve, with the government having already mandated reduced water and energy consumption for data centers, RoW said. 

Lee, noting that other countries also have a similar climate profile, hopes that advances by the Testbed may be adopted as well by others in the future. “Many of the world’s fastest-growing digital economies — such as Jakarta, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, and Mumbai — share similar hot and humid conditions,” Lee said. 

How can the data center boom be made sustainable?

BusinessWorld reported in October that Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Henry Aguda is looking to reach 1.5 gigawatts in total data center output by 2028. 

Currently, the country’s output is at around 200 megawatts. Regional leader Singapore has a capacity of 1.4 gigawatts, followed by Malaysia and Indonesia, both below 1,000 megawatts.  

Aguda said the DICT wants to promote the Philippines as a data center hub, and plans to round up investments from the US, amid rising global demand. 

The environmental impact of data centers again made headlines in the US just days ago when its Congress reformed its 1969 National Environmental Policy Act — which pushes for faster permitting for building data centers, at the expense of comprehensive environmental reviews.

Days before that, more than 200 environmental groups were protesting, and demanding a halt to new US data centers, citing the aforementioned water shortage and electricity cost issues.

In light of all this, how must the Philippines act? We’re a far, far cry from the data center capacity of the US currently rated at more than 53 gigawatts. 

But we’re also at a tipping point for data center expansion. 

So before that happens, we ask: what environmental policies do we have in place that would make this expansion — this digital transformation, and these economic efforts to capture demand — sustainable? 

The UN’s data center sustainability procurement guidelines released back in June are a start. Aside from Singapore, the European Union — via the Energy Efficiency Directive — also started mandating in 2024 that data centers above 500 kilowatts report their power use with very specific metrics.

And green efforts will be a smart business decision too. 

As the ASEAN Briefing notes: “Environmental sustainability is another critical issue [in attracting data center investments]. ESG-compliant (Environmental, Social, and Governance) designs, energy-efficient cooling systems, and integration with renewable energy sources are becoming baseline requirements from international clients and enterprise customers. Developers who fail to meet these expectations may struggle to attract long-term tenants.” 

But we also know that in the Philippines, environmental concerns can often play fourth or fifth fiddle to profit, “growth,” or personal gain. 

We know these data centers are coming, so it’s key that we keep a close eye on communities that may be affected when they are constructed — considering too that electricity and water supply continue to be nagging problems in some regions in the country. – Rappler.com