As data centres proliferate, do we have enough clean energy for them to guzzle?

Just to store what we currently generate, our local capacity would need to multiply quickly. Apart from ever greater aspects of our existence going digital, we also have the voracious data appetite of artificial intelligence (AI) to contend with. In all, we can expect demand for facilities that store and process data to go up exponentially.

It is in this context that US-based Google raised its 2025 capex outlay to $85 billion, as reported, and plans to invest $15 billion over five years in building a data hub at Visakhapatnam. Indian software major TCS has a data centre plan of its own, as do other local players like Reliance, Adani, Bharti Airtel and L&T. With so much capacity about to be added, India must start worrying about keeping these units supplied with the electricity they will guzzle.

There is a reason why data-centre capacity is measured in mega or gigawatts of power. A single facility’s storage capacity and processing power can change rapidly, since the same warehouse can host various configurations of hardware, often with their chips being upgraded frequently. While it takes electricity to run processors, it takes even more of it to maintain optimal ambient conditions for it.

Google proposes to kick off with a capacity of 1 gigawatt (GW), while TCS aims for that scale over several years. To put that in perspective, just these two would account for half of Mumbai’s power demand, placed at roughly 4GW. India’s entire installed generation capacity is now close to 480GW. Of this, about half does not burn fossil fuels to generate electricity; its sources are mostly renewable, with nuclear forming a tiny wedge.

As India’s economy becomes larger and more complex, power consumption is sure to rise from its currently low per-capita level. In line with our transition to sustainable energy as part of a national drive to decarbonize the economy, we must increase the share of clean electricity consumed across the country. This means that major guzzlers like data centres must arrange low-emission power supply if they are not to distort India’s climate progress.

America’s Big Tech giants value eco-friendly reputations and have been unveiling plans for clean energy to power their AI ambitions. Indian investors in data centres seem relatively constrained in their options right now.

Yet, for comfort, we need a quicker transition on the whole. Over two-thirds of the electricity used in India still comes from burning coal. Given our vast coal reserves, we have resisted its phase-out, but even so, we must minimize its harmful emissions.

Indian coal is relatively free of sulphur, although its ash content is high. Of course, its carbon exhaust is the big worry. If we expect to keep coal in play as a fuel, we need to gasify it, burn that gas—either syngas or methane—and capture the carbon dioxide released in the process. Coal gasification is vintage technology. With R&D, though, we can improve upon it.

Apart from better conversion to gas, we could aim for the ‘pyrolysis’ of methane into valuable forms of carbon (like graphene) and hydrogen, which is a clean fuel. All said, while the rise of data centres is welcome, as it attracts capital and satisfies an identified need, R&D efforts must accompany it.