Malaysia's Palm Oil Estates Are Turning Into Data Centers 17
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Malaysia's palm oil giants, long-blamed for razing rainforests, fueling toxic haze and driving orangutans to the brink of extinction, are recasting themselves as unlikely champions in a different, potentially greener race: the quest to lure the world's AI data centers to the Southeast Asian country (source paywalled; alternative source). Palm oil companies are earmarking some of the vast tracts of land they own for industrial parks studded with data centers and solar panels, the latter meant to feed the insatiable energy appetites of the former. The logic is simple: data centers are power and land hogs. By 2035, they could demand at least five gigawatts of electricity in Malaysia -- almost 20% of the country's current generation capacity and roughly enough to power a major city like Miami. Malaysia also needs space to house server farms, and palm oil giants control more land than any other private entity in the country.
The country has been at the heart of a regional data center boom. Last year, it was the fastest-growing data center market in the Asia-Pacific region and roughly 40% of all planned capacity in Southeast Asia is now slated for Malaysia, according to industry consultant DC Byte. Over the past four years, $34 billion in data center investments has poured into the country -- Alphabet's Google committed $2 billion, Microsoft announced a $2.2 billion investment and Amazon is spending $6.2 billion, to name a few. The government aims for 81 data centers by 2035. The rush is partly a spillover from Singapore, where a years-long moratorium on new centers forced operators to look north. Johor, just across the causeway, is now a hive of construction cranes and server farms -- including for firms such as Singapore Telecommunications, Nvidia and ByteDance. But delivering on government promises of renewable power is proving harder.
The strains are already being felt in Malaysia's data center capital. Sedenak Tech Park, one of Johor's flagship sites, is telling potential tenants they'll need to wait until the fourth quarter of 2026 for promised water and power hookups under its second-phase expansion, according to DC Byte. The vacancy rate in Johor's live facilities is just 1.1%, according to real estate consultant Knight Frank. Despite its rapid growth, the market is nowhere near saturation, with six gigawatts of capacity expected to be built out over time, said Knight Frank's head of data centers for Asia Pacific, Fred Fitzalan Howard. That potential bottleneck has incentivized palm oil majors such as SD Guthrie Bhd. to pitch themselves as both landowners and green-power suppliers. The $8.9 billion palm oil producer, SD Guthrie, is the world's largest palm oil planter by acreage, with more than 340,000 hectares in Malaysia. "SD Guthrie is pivoting to solar farms and industrial parks, betting that tech giants hungry for server space will prefer sites with ready access to renewable energy," reports Bloomberg. "The company has reserved 10,000 hectares for such projects over the next decade, starting with clearing old rubber estates and low-yielding palm plots in areas near data center and semiconductor investment hubs."
"The company's calculation is based on this: one megawatt of solar requires about 1.5 hectares. Helmy said SD Guthrie wants one gigawatt in operation within three years, enough to power up to 10 hyperscale data centers used for AI computing. The new business is expected to make up about a third of its profits by the end of the decade."
The country has been at the heart of a regional data center boom. Last year, it was the fastest-growing data center market in the Asia-Pacific region and roughly 40% of all planned capacity in Southeast Asia is now slated for Malaysia, according to industry consultant DC Byte. Over the past four years, $34 billion in data center investments has poured into the country -- Alphabet's Google committed $2 billion, Microsoft announced a $2.2 billion investment and Amazon is spending $6.2 billion, to name a few. The government aims for 81 data centers by 2035. The rush is partly a spillover from Singapore, where a years-long moratorium on new centers forced operators to look north. Johor, just across the causeway, is now a hive of construction cranes and server farms -- including for firms such as Singapore Telecommunications, Nvidia and ByteDance. But delivering on government promises of renewable power is proving harder.
The strains are already being felt in Malaysia's data center capital. Sedenak Tech Park, one of Johor's flagship sites, is telling potential tenants they'll need to wait until the fourth quarter of 2026 for promised water and power hookups under its second-phase expansion, according to DC Byte. The vacancy rate in Johor's live facilities is just 1.1%, according to real estate consultant Knight Frank. Despite its rapid growth, the market is nowhere near saturation, with six gigawatts of capacity expected to be built out over time, said Knight Frank's head of data centers for Asia Pacific, Fred Fitzalan Howard. That potential bottleneck has incentivized palm oil majors such as SD Guthrie Bhd. to pitch themselves as both landowners and green-power suppliers. The $8.9 billion palm oil producer, SD Guthrie, is the world's largest palm oil planter by acreage, with more than 340,000 hectares in Malaysia. "SD Guthrie is pivoting to solar farms and industrial parks, betting that tech giants hungry for server space will prefer sites with ready access to renewable energy," reports Bloomberg. "The company has reserved 10,000 hectares for such projects over the next decade, starting with clearing old rubber estates and low-yielding palm plots in areas near data center and semiconductor investment hubs."
"The company's calculation is based on this: one megawatt of solar requires about 1.5 hectares. Helmy said SD Guthrie wants one gigawatt in operation within three years, enough to power up to 10 hyperscale data centers used for AI computing. The new business is expected to make up about a third of its profits by the end of the decade."
I guess big tech is going to speedrun offshoring (Score:3)
They're speedrunning Enron, so I guess they're going to speedrun offshoring. Why pay 12 Americans to keep your datacenter running when you can pay even less to someone in a foreign country? They'll keep chasing cheaper and cheaper labor and land before they've even finished the projects here.
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Eh, in the long run palm oil is probably the only thing worse for humanity than these data centers, so this is still a net positive IMO.
Re: I guess big tech is going to speedrun offshori (Score:2)
You want ... (Score:2)
Pivot? (Score:3)
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Assuming the land where forests have already been cleared for palm oil production are now used for data centers, organguatns won't lose any more of their homes.
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Maybe they can train orangutans to work in the datacentres!
Re: Pivot? (Score:3)
Now provide access roads for construction, foundations on the soil, disposal of the removed fill, and water/sewer
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The shade prevents stuff from growing, causing animals to die off, and because of lack of plants, soil erosion happens. LED floodlights to simulate natural sun aren't the answer; plants need the full wavelength of natural sun to grow effectively.
Sure... move the datacenters there, they'll have an even easier time running robocalls and scams now that they don't need a separate server farm just for that.
Maybe there should be a tariff on offshoring stuff... maybe a tariff on sending that offshored data back t
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Good idea... plant a crop of lettuce under the solar panels, where you can't drive a tractor to harvest them.
Plants that grow fine under a forest canopy still get light... what grows when you mount a 1 meter square sheet of plywood (as in, no sun) above it? If the panel let's light through, that's less power output... and, we all know the precious LLM-AI datacenters are gonna need every last watt.
Of course, everything that needs that power only gets it during the day (you'll say; sure, store the excess...
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Perhaps you didn't read the wiki article. It has already addressed many of the points you have mention.
Yes, the solar panel will not cover 100% and will still let some lights through. But so do most of the current large solar farms. They are always some gaps as they are usually mounted at an angled toward the sun. It is definitely not as good yield compared to 100% solar or 100% farm land but with combined land use efficiency is often much better than when they are done separately.
Also, while we shoul
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How's your tractor going to harvest the engineered corn (or whatever) growing under the panels?
Gaps = wasted space
Something that only works for 12 hours a day (and some soybean crops and a bunch of cows) reduces CO2 more than a country covered in trees (that can die off naturally)? What about in the off hours? Where does that power come from... the battery bank that "is charged by the excess"? What excess? I doubt OpenAI is going to build more panels than they need.
And, keep in mind, the panels are 1 sq
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Numerous studies of "agrivoltaics" (solar PV combined with farming) has shown that solar PV improves yields, reduces water use by providing partial shade. Good for both plant and animal farming.
We're very close to the bust (Score:2)
when not only cuckerberg, mustafa and satya, but even the shrub growers in Malaysia have now gone full "AI".
You never go full "AI".
From palm oil... (Score:2)