Beware, This Building Makes Surrounding Areas Scorchingly Hot

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Data centres are causing surrounding areas to heat up by as much as 9 degrees Celsius. These areas, known as “heat islands,” extend several kilometres from the facilities.

The research sampled regions around 8,400 locations of giant data centres called hyperscalers. Hyperscale data centres are typically used as infrastructure for cloud services and AI, whose demand has surged in recent years.

The size of hyperscalers is growing larger over time. For example, Meta’s Hyperion data centre, valued at US$27 billion, has a capacity of up to 5 GW, requiring electricity supply from 10 gas-fired power plants.

To minimise potential influences from other environmental factors, the researchers focused on data centres located far from residential areas. They then mapped temperatures in those regions over the past 20 years. The results showed that land surface temperatures around data centres rose by an average of 2 degrees Celsius, with the highest increase reaching 9 degrees Celsius.

The impact of this surface temperature rise extends up to 10 kilometres and affects the lives of 340 million people.

Andrea Marioni, the lead researcher and professor at the University of Cambridge, stated that his study illustrates the extraordinary impact of data centres on surrounding communities in terms of the environment, welfare, and economy.

However, Chris Preist from the University of Bristol said that further research is needed to understand the source of the heat increase.

“There needs to be research into how far the heat comes from the computing processes or from the data centre buildings,” he said, as quoted by Futurism.

Preist explained that sunlight reflecting off data centre buildings could be a source of the heat increase. This phenomenon is known as the “urban heat island” effect.