KUALA LUMPUR, 30 August 2025 – As Malaysia races toward becoming Southeast Asia’s digital powerhouse, the emerging data centre industry must grapple with mounting energy demands and environmental responsibility. Telekom Malaysia (TM) is stepping up with a pioneering strategy that combines sustainability, sovereignty, and scalability—crafting green, locally owned data centres that power the country’s digital transformation while minimizing environmental impact.
TM is responding to pressures from a booming market, projected to expand to RM19.27 billion by 2028, with its latest generation of data centres boasting impressive energy efficiency metrics. The TM Nxera Data Centre in Johor, along with upgrades to the Klang Valley Data Centre (KVDC) and Iskandar Puteri Data Centre (IPDC), now operate with a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratio between 1.3 and 1.4, a marked improvement from earlier PUEs of 1.6 to 1.8. Those marginal gains equate to substantial electricity savings, slashing emissions and operational costs in the process.
Beyond energy efficiency, TM has solidified its environmental commitments by sourcing over 50% of its data centre electricity from renewables under Malaysia’s Green Electricity Tariff (GET), while integrating rainwater harvesting systems and strict water usage monitoring. Its efforts are validated through certifications like EnMS, EMS, LEED Silver, and TIA-942—demonstrating that green infrastructure can also mean high performance.
An equally strategic dimension of TM’s model is digital sovereignty. By developing, owning, and operating its data centres domestically, TM ensures critical infrastructure remains under national jurisdiction, governed by local data laws and cybersecurity standards. Its shared infrastructure model allows businesses—including hyperscalers—to access robust, cost-efficient hosting without building their own carbon-intensive facilities.
Further extending its regional impact, TM is building out an edge computing network to support latency-sensitive applications such as smart city systems, autonomous vehicles, and industrial AI analytics. Its GPU-as-a-Service offering allows clients to tap advanced computing power without maintaining their own energy-intensive GPU farms.
As demand for data processing increases, Malaysia may be looking at a sharp climb from 9 TWh in 2024 to around 68 TWh by 2030, which could absorb more than half the nation’s renewables capacity by 2035. TM’s forward-thinking infrastructure planning offers hope that the nation’s digital trajectory can stay aligned with its climate goals.
