Smart planning, not panic, must guide Asia’s data centre buildout
The spread of data centres in Asia does not seem to have sparked the kind of protests it has in the West, but good policies are needed to ensure that remains the case
Across the United States, home to 37 per cent of the world’s 10,800 or so data centres, 2026 has been awash with protests against this infrastructure buildout. On July 18 alone, 142 protests were reported across 42 states.
According to Data Centre Watch, 75 US data centre projects worth US$130 billion have been blocked or delayed. According to recent Pew research, the more Americans know about data centres, the more negative they are: 67 per cent of American adults are anxious about their impact on home energy costs and 63 per cent are alarmed by potential environmental harm.
Anxiety is also focused on noise, property values, local jobs and rising taxation. It seems data centres have become the new “not in my backyard” flashpoint, with calls for a convergence of protests around August 1, the National Day of Action against Data Centres.
First and foremost is the concentration of data centre construction in a small number of hubs. According to a UN think tank report, more than 90 per cent of AI-specialised computing capacity sits in either the US or China. In contrast, 150 countries “lack significant domestic AI infrastructure”.