Mr Speaker, for a decade we have governed this industry through certification schemes, technical standards and the conditions attached to tenders, and the Government's own consultation paper concluded that these measures alone could not ensure consistent sustainability outcomes across the sector, necessitating a statutory regulatory framework. Licensing, enforceable conditions, audit powers and penalties of up to a million dollars or a tenth of an operator's Singapore turnover give the regulator what it needs, and I welcome them.
I welcome in particular that the energy efficiency duty reaches data centres already operating. Singapore is a regional data centre hub, with a total capacity of 1.6 gigawatts, and a framework covering only new builds would have left a significant portion of the sector untouched. I also welcome clause 39(3)(b), which allows IMDA to recover the cost savings obtained where an operator breaches a licence condition limiting the amount or proportion of electricity that may be drawn from a specified energy source. This removes any financial incentive to breach such a condition.
I have questions on four matters: the exemptions, the standards to be set under the Bill, carbon emission requirements, and the publication of consumption data.
The exemptions
Clause 3(5) exempts four categories of data centre from the licensing and efficiency requirements. Data centres operated by telecommunications, electricity and gas licensees are exempt where they are used for the licensee’s regulated activities or for activities ancillary to those regulated activities.
Government-operated data centres situated in Government-owned or occupied facilities, and data centres operated by public authorities in facilities they own or occupy, are exempt without the activity-based limitations that apply to some of the other exemptions.
For example, in October last year, JTC and the Economic Development Board set aside some twenty hectares on Jurong Island for a low-carbon data centre park capable of supporting up to seven hundred megawatts. While such facilities are expected to be operated by commercial operators, the scale of the project illustrates the significance of the exemption. If a public authority were itself to operate a qualifying data centre in premises it owned or occupied, Part 4 would not apply.
Why are data centres run by Government agencies and statutory boards exempt from the same statutory energy and water efficiency requirements that apply to licensed operators? What measures would ensure that data centres run by Government agencies and statutory boards meet the same energy and water efficiency standards as licensed operators, so that the exemption does not undermine the Bill's purpose of making the sector more efficient?
Furthermore, clause 65 empowers the Minister to exempt any person or class of persons from any provision of the Act by order published in the Gazette. Unlike an order made under clause 66, such an exemption order need not be presented to Parliament.
Will the Ministry undertake to report to this House any exemption granted under clause 65 from Part 4 of the Act?
The standards
The Government has already set efficiency standards for new data centres. The main measure is power usage effectiveness, which compares a data centre's total electricity use with the electricity used by its servers; a figure of 1.25 means that for every unit of electricity the servers use, another quarter of a unit goes on cooling and other overheads.
IMDA’s second Call for Application for data centres in December 2025 required a power usage effectiveness of 1.25, improved from 1.3 in the pilot exercise, together with Green Mark Platinum certification and at least half the power drawn from green sources.
For data centres already operating, clause 35 requires them to meet whatever efficiency standard is prescribed, and clause 67 allows different standards for different classes of licensee. The Act itself sets no period for older facilities to reach the standard.
I would like to ask the Minister what power usage effectiveness standard existing data centres will be required to meet, whether different standards will apply to different classes of facilities, and how long older facilities will be given to achieve compliance.
On water, clause 35 allows water efficiency standards to be prescribed, but the Ministry's response to the public consultation says none will be set when the Act first takes effect.
In May 2024 the Government disclosed that large data centres in 2021 used a median of 2.2 cubic metres of water for every megawatt hour of electricity used by their servers, and said IMDA would work with PUB to bring this down to 2.0 or less over the medium term. PUB has since published a sector benchmark of 2.1 cubic metres per megawatt hour.
I would like to ask the minister, when will water efficiency standards be set, and does the Government still intend to bring the sector to 2.0 cubic metres per megawatt hour or below?
The Call for Application set a figure for electricity efficiency and none for water; will the next Call for Application include one for water usage too?
In the meantime, clause 25 requires IMDA to consider a data centre's water efficiency before granting a licence. PUB already publishes a water efficiency benchmark for data centres, based on the water use figures that every user drawing at least 60,000 cubic metres a year has had to submit since 2015. Will IMDA use that benchmark when it assesses water efficiency under clause 25?
On Carbon Emission Compliance
The Bill allows IMDA to impose a licence condition requiring an operator to mitigate emissions associated with non-low-carbon electricity by acquiring and surrendering eligible international carbon credits. Separately, if an operator breaches a condition limiting its use of electricity from a specified energy source, IMDA may require it to transfer credits to the Government to offset the additional emissions caused by the breach. The Bill does not, however, prescribe a percentage limit on the extent to which eligible international carbon credits may be used to meet an emissions-related licence condition.
Under the carbon tax regime, a taxable facility may use eligible international carbon credits to offset no more than 5% of its taxable emissions. The Government has explained that this facility-level limit is intended to ensure that industry continues to prioritise emissions reductions domestically. The tax is levied on about 50 facilities in the manufacturing, power, waste and water sectors.
Data centres drawing electricity from the grid indirectly bear a carbon price because power-generation companies may pass some of their carbon-tax costs through electricity tariffs. However, standalone data-centre operations do not appear to fall within the prescribed sectors directly covered by the carbon tax merely because they consume grid electricity.
Will a limit comparable to the 5% carbon-tax limit apply when international carbon credits are used to meet an emissions-related condition under this Bill? If not, what limit or safeguards will apply to ensure that operators continue to prioritise lower-carbon electricity and emissions reductions over the purchase of credits?
Will the Minister also clarify how the emissions impact of a data centre will be taken into account when licensing decisions are made, and whether this consideration should be expressly stipulated? Clause 25 permits IMDA to consider the emissions characteristics of the electricity used, the proposed use of carbon credits, and the bearing of the data centre’s energy consumption on Singapore’s international emissions-reduction commitments, but leaves the weight to be given to those matters to the Authority.
Publication of available consumption data
Mr Speaker, clause 36 requires licensees to report to IMDA each year on whether they are complying with the Act, their licence conditions and the codes of practice. It does not expressly require annual reporting or publication of absolute electricity and water consumption for the sector, nor does it require publication of aggregate sector-wide totals. Because power usage effectiveness is a ratio, a data centre can become more efficient each year while using more electricity each year, simply by adding servers, and the same is true of the sector as a whole. This House and the public will not know how much electricity and water data centres use, or how quickly that is growing.
The Government already has the data. Every large water user, including data centres, has reported its water use to PUB each year since 2015 under mandatory rules, and the Government's own estimate of data centre electricity use was calculated from Energy Market Authority data. Neither agency publishes a current total for the data centre sector. The most frequently cited official figure is that data centres accounted for about 7 per cent of Singapore's electricity consumption in 2020. That figure is now several years old and does not show how electricity use has evolved as capacity and computing intensity have grown along with the recent boom in data centre demand.
Some jurisdictions with large data centre sectors do publish these figures. Ireland's statistics office has published annual figures on data centre electricity use since 2020, compiled from electricity meter readings; its latest release shows data centres used 23 per cent of the electricity metered in Ireland in 2025, up from 5 per cent in 2015. Virginia's legislature commissioned an independent study, which highlighted the substantial generation and grid investments that may be required if data centre demand continues to grow rapidly, and estimated that the industry supports some 74,000 jobs.
When my honourable friend, Sengkang GRC MP, Ms He Ting Ru, asked on 7 January 2025, what proportion of Singapore's total electricity consumption would be accounted for by data centres once their capacity increased by at least a third, the reply restated the Government's commitment to add 300 megawatts of capacity but did not provide the projected proportion of national electricity consumption.
In February this year, the honourable member for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC Ms Elysa Chen asked what proportion of our freshwater supply data centres use, or failing that, how much water in volume. PUB collects data centres' water use every year; yet the entire reply was one sentence saying that most of the water supplied to data centres is NEWater rather than freshwater.
Clause 60 requires IMDA to keep confidential what operators disclose, and I accept that individual operators have good reasons for this. The design and security of a data centre should not be public, and neither should one company's commercial figures. However, aggregate usage statistics for the whole sector would reveal neither. It would not identify any operator, and it would inform the public what the efficiency standards in this Bill are meant to achieve: whether the sector's use of electricity and water is being kept within what our grid and water supply can sustain. The Bill does not require IMDA to publish such aggregate figures. I call on the Government to publish such sector-level data so that the public can see whether the efficiency standards in this Bill are working, and whether the sector's use of electricity and water remains within what our grid and water supply can sustain.
Mr Speaker, in Mandarin please.
议长先生，数据中心是新加坡数码经济的重要基础设施，但也消耗大量电力和水资源。政府过去主要通过行业标准和自愿措施来推动节能，如今决定通过立法加强监管，我对此表示支持。
不过，我希望政府进一步说明几个问题。第一，一些由政府部门和法定机构营运的数据中心可以获得豁免。如果这些数据中心同样消耗大量电力和水资源，它们是否也应该遵守相同的节能和节水标准，并接受同样的问责和监督，而不是因为豁免而游离于这些标准之外？
第二，现有数据中心未来需要达到什么电能使用效率标准，又有多少时间过渡？
第三，政府会不会公布整个行业的用电和用水数据，让国会和公众了解这些措施是否真正有效，以及数据中心的发展是否在我国能源和水资源能够承受的范围内？
议长先生，尽管我提出了上述疑问，我依然支持这项法案。
Conclusion
In conclusion, Mr Speaker, this Bill gives Singapore, for the first time, a law written specifically for data centres, covering how they use electricity and water.
My questions are meant to make sure it works as intended: that the exemptions for Government agencies and public authorities do not leave part of the sector outside its standards, that operators know the energy and water standards they will be held to and when, and that Parliament and the public can see the results.
Notwithstanding the clarifications I have sought, Sir, I support the Bill.
