The volume of data centre launch news items may perhaps only be matched by news of initiatives to mitigate the power demands of this fast-growing industry. One such this week involves Asia-focused data centre platform company Digital Edge (Singapore) and Peak Energy Investments, a leading renewable developer and independent power producer with operations across Asia.
The two companies have entered into an agreement whereby Digital Edge and Peak Energy will collaborate to pursue renewable energy production projects designed to power Digital Edge data centres across the Asia-Pacific region.
Through this partnership, Peak Energy and Digital Edge say they will jointly pursue an initial pipeline of 500MW of operating capacity for both existing and planned data centres over a three-year period.
Peak Energy, which focuses on a combination of solar, wind and storage technologies, will target renewable energy projects in countries where Digital Edge has existing deployments, including Japan, Korea, Indonesia, India and the Philippines, in addition to other fast-growing markets, to support Digital Edge's expansion.
These projects will support the decarbonisation of up to 1 GW of power, and generate more than 1,300 GWh per year which, say the partners, is equivalent to taking 216,000 cars off the road.
This isn’t a new direction for Digital Edge. Samuel Lee, Chief Executive Officer at Digital Edge, explains: "To date, we have made substantial progress in leveraging renewable energy across the Digital Edge platform, with our EDGE1 facility in Jakarta becoming the first data centre in Indonesia to run on 100% renewables. Through this partnership with Peak Energy, we will be able to further build on these initiatives and advance our ESG goals."
Digital Edge and Peak Energy are both portfolio companies of Stonepeak, a leading alternative investment firm specialising in infrastructure and real assets with a strong focus on both data centres and renewable energy assets.