India and Singapore Can Partner on Sustainable AI Data Centres, Says NUS Research Brief

The explosive growth of artificial intelligence is forcing a reckoning in data centre design — and a new research brief from the National University of Singapore's Institute of South Asian Studies argues that India and Singapore are uniquely positioned to cooperate on building sustainable digital infrastructure for the AI era. The brief, published July 24, lays out how the two countries can combine scale, capital, and technical expertise to address the immense energy and water demands of AI workloads.

Data centres already consume about seven per cent of Singapore's total electricity, and the figure is rising as AI models demand ever more compute power. Singapore responded with a landmark moratorium on new data centre developments in 2019, forcing the industry to build hyper-efficient, multi-storey vertical facilities running high-value workloads. The scarcity-driven approach has produced world-leading efficiency standards, but the city-state's long-term ability to scale remains constrained by land and energy limits.

The brief identifies three areas where India and Singapore can cooperate: next-generation cooling systems for tropical climates (seawater-based thermal systems, liquid-to-chip cooling, AI-optimised microgrids); a shared reporting framework for sustainability disclosures to combat greenwashing in a rapidly expanding sector; and new standards for compute-sharing, green AI model hosting, and trusted cross-border data arrangements. India's data centre capacity has nearly tripled since 2020 to 1.5 gigawatts, projected to reach 6.5 GW by 2030, but the country lacks mandatory sustainability reporting and coordinated oversight across power, water, and environment sectors.

The timing is strategic. The third India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable in August 2025 already identified digitalisation, sustainability, and cross-border data flows as priority areas. Singapore brings a tested governance model for sustainable data centres, while India offers market scale and the opportunity to build green digital infrastructure from the ground up. As AI continues to drive data centre expansion across Asia, cooperation between the two countries could set regional standards for how digital infrastructure grows without overwhelming local energy grids and water supplies.

Why it matters for Singapore: For a small island state with limited renewable energy capacity, Singapore's data centre strategy cannot be purely domestic. The ISAS brief highlights a reality that AI infrastructure planners here already know: Singapore's long-term competitiveness as a regional AI hub depends on cross-border energy partnerships and standards leadership. The brief's proposed cooperation framework — combining Singapore's efficiency standards with India's scale — offers a practical blueprint for how Singapore can extend its digital ecosystem regionally without compromising its sustainability commitments.