Sustainability wave powering green data centre growth

Sustainability wave powering green data centre growth

Vietnam’s green data centre market is poised for rapid growth, fuelled by government mandates, rising cloud adoption, and surging investment in sustainable infrastructure.

A new report by IMARC Group, released on July 28, projects Vietnam’s green data centre market will grow at an annual rate of 15.3 per cent from 2025 to 2033. This expansion is underpinned by regulatory pressure and sustainability commitments.

The Power Development Plan VIII outlines a target of carbon neutrality by 2050, pushing energy-intensive sectors like data centres to shift towards renewable energy and improved efficiency. Meanwhile, a draft Data Centre Decree is expected to introduce strict power usage standards, potentially enforcing specific power usage effectiveness benchmarks.

Beyond compliance, multinational corporations and domestic enterprises are embedding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria deeply into procurement policies. Meeting Scope 3 emissions targets for clients necessitates operators to procure renewable energy, often through nascent but growing direct power purchase agreement (PPA) frameworks and on-site solar installations.

This regulatory and ESG convergence creates a non-negotiable environment where green credentials are transitioning from a competitive advantage to an absolute market entry requirement, accelerating investments in renewable procurement strategies, advanced cooling technologies, and energy management systems. The pressure is further amplified by international investors increasingly scrutinising the carbon footprint of digital infrastructure assets.

The report noted that Vietnam's strategic position as a burgeoning digital economy hub is attracting massive hyperscale cloud investments (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform), creating unprecedented demand for sustainable, large-scale data centre capacity. These hyperscalers have ambitious global carbon neutrality goals, making renewable energy sourcing and ultra-efficient facilities mandatory for their Vietnamese deployments.

This demand surge acts as a powerful catalyst, pushing local and international colocation providers to rapidly develop greenfield facilities powered by solar, wind (often via off-site PPAs), and integrating cutting-edge designs like indirect evaporative cooling optimised for Vietnam's tropical climate. The sheer scale of hyperscale requirements accelerates the adoption of industrial best practices in green construction and operations, raising the bar for the entire market. Furthermore, the growth of domestic digital services, fintech, and e-commerce platforms also increasingly prioritises sustainable hosting, creating a robust secondary market for green colocation and wholesale space beyond the hyperscalers themselves.

The rapid maturation and decreasing cost curves of key green technologies are making sustainable data centre operations economically compelling in Vietnam, beyond just regulatory compliance. Innovations in cooling, energy management, and renewables make green data centres a cost-effective, resilient infrastructure choice across sectors.

At the same time, the cost of generating utility-scale solar and wind power in Vietnam is now equal to or cheaper than buying electricity from the national grid in many areas. This is especially true as retail power prices rise and concerns grow over grid reliability. As a result, more companies are investing in on-site solar systems (rooftop and ground-mounted), large-scale off-site renewable PPAs, and battery energy storage systems to improve energy security and make full use of renewable sources.

The integration of these technologies is transforming green data centres from premium offerings to the most operationally resilient and cost-effective long-term solution, particularly as energy costs constitute a dominant portion of total operational expenditure.

VIR