Four proposals were selected from twenty by Singapore's Economic Development Board and the Infocomm Media Development Authority on 21 August, under the country's second Data Centre Call for Application1. Digital Realty, Equinix, Keppel Data Centres and ST Telemedia Global Data Centres each hold a provisional allocation of 50 MW, 200 MW in total, and the agencies will decide within 18 to 24 months whether to run a third call.
Singapore hands out data-centre capacity through competitive calls rather than granting it to whoever applies, which is why twenty proposals were chasing a fixed pool. A provisional allocation is a right to build up to a stated load, not a commissioned hall, and none of the 200 MW is running.
Digital Realty then published detail the joint announcement omitted. Its 50 MW sits at Jurong Island's low-carbon data centre park, conditioned on sourcing more than 50% of that capacity through green power pathways and on meeting the authority's efficiency standard under the call. No commissioning date was given2.
Bidders were therefore pricing a green-power obligation into their proposals before a single building went up. Elsewhere the same arguments about power sourcing and efficiency arrive after consent is granted, when a project is already sunk and a regulator is negotiating with a built asset. Taiwan put a generation obligation on its largest electricity users in early August, a condition of the same kind imposed on operators already drawing power. Singapore has put them at the front, where the cost of the condition lands on the bid rather than on a retrofit.
