Around the world, about 600 data centers are located in regions where annual temperatures exceed what the facilities can handle, according to Rest of World.
What's happening?
Data centers perform best when ambient temperatures are between 18 and 27 degrees Celsius (64 to 81 degrees Fahrenheit). When temperatures climb above that range, the cost of keeping equipment cool skyrockets, electrical systems get overloaded, and pollution increases.
A new analysis looked at nearly 8,800 active data centers across the globe and found about 600 in areas that are simply too warm. Every data center in 21 nations sits in an overheated zone, from Singapore and Thailand to Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates.
"Cooling data centers is particularly challenging in the hottest parts of the world, home to many growing data center hubs," said Laura Schwartz, senior Asia analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, per Rest of Word.
Singapore faces an especially tough situation. The country's 72 data centers all operate in temperatures above what's considered ideal.
"In thermal terms, Singapore is almost 'permanent peak summer' for a data center," said PS Lee, who runs the Sustainable Tropical Data Centre Testbed at the National University of Singapore, per Rest of Word.
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Why does data center placement matter?
In 2024, these facilities gobbled up about 415 terawatt-hours of electricity, close to 1.5% of what the world uses each year. The International Energy Agency projected that figure could grow by 100% or more before the decade ends as demand for artificial intelligence continues to climb.
AI sits at the center of this tension.
The technology can help optimize clean energy systems and improve efficiency in several industries. But training and running AI models requires enormous computing power, which means more data centers, more electricity, and more cooling.
If these facilities keep expanding in hot locations without better solutions, the strain on local grids and freshwater supplies will only grow.
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Yes — it'll pay off 👍 What's being done to cool data centers?
Tech companies are testing new ways to keep their servers from overheating.
Google applied its DeepMind software to its own facilities and said it has slashed cooling-related electricity by as much as 40%. Microsoft is carving microscopic channels into chips so liquid can pass over processors and draw heat away. Amazon has built a liquid-based cooling setup that cuts the energy needed to run cooling machinery by nearly half.
Officials in Singapore now require data centers to bring down their electricity and water consumption. Researchers are testing methods that submerge servers in liquid or pipe coolant directly to chips, approaches that could shrink electricity needs by 40% and drastically lower how much freshwater gets used.
Some companies in China and the Middle East are even exploring using underground facilities to stay cool.
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