BANGKOK, Oct 27 (Reuters) – Thailand’s data centre committee said on Tuesday that it would establish a set of minimum requirements for data centre operators, including standards for location and land use, fuel storage and water management infrastructure as well as an environmental code of practice.
• Data centres will be divided into seven tiers based on power demand, the committee said
• New data centre applications are expected to open in early 2027, after the criteria are submitted to cabinet next week, said Danucha Pichayanan, secretary-general of the National Economic and Social Development Council
• Existing data centres will have one year to meet the new minimum requirements, Danucha said
• Danucha said that there were more than 100 prospective operators
• Thailand has seen a wave of data centre investments in recent years, prompting the government to scrutinise their impact.
• As of February, it had 42 data centres, representing 3,400 MW of IT load and about 750 billion baht ($22.58 billion) in investment
• Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy wants to position itself as a regional data infrastructure hub, similar to Singapore and Malaysia
• Some of the largest data centre projects have been from TikTok, which invested $24.61 billion this year
• In 2024, Google announced a $1 billion investment in data centre and cloud architecture
($1 = 33.2200 baht)
(Reporting by Chayut Setboonsarng, Editing by David Stanway)
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