The Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) will table legislation in Parliament later this year to mandate stricter energy-efficiency and cybersecurity standards for data centres and major cloud service providers (CSPs), says Senior Minister of State Tan Kiat How.
The proposed Digital Infrastructure Act (DIA) will require all data centres operating locally, including existing facilities and future developments, to meet specified power usage effectiveness (PUE) standards.
Singapore hosts more than 1.4 gigawatts of installed data centre capacity, and demand is expected to climb as artificial intelligence (AI) workloads expand. Given the city-state’s natural resource constraints, it is crucial to ensure the growth of data centres is sustainable.
“It is irresponsible for the government to take a hands-off approach and leave it entirely to commercial arrangements between the CSPs, data centre operators and their enterprise customers when there are spillover implications to the broader economy, society, national security and Singapore’s international reputation,” says Tan, at the launch of a Centre of Excellence for Applied AI by Singtel’s Digital InfraCo and Nvidia this morning.
He adds that MDDI and the Infocomm Media Development Authority have been consulting industry players to calibrate the proposed PUE thresholds so they are “ambitious but practical and consistent with international benchmarks”. Rather than applying standards solely to new builds, the government intends to raise energy efficiency across the entire stock of existing data centres as operators refresh their equipment over time.
Beyond green metrics, the proposed DIA will also establish baseline security and resilience obligations for major CSPs. Digital infrastructure increasingly underpins essential daily services — from e-banking and ride-hailing to digital identity authentication — and any significant disruption or cyberattack would have cascading economic and social consequences, notes Tan.
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Under the proposed law, major CSPs and data centre operators will need to put in place risk management measures, minimise service disruption and ensure business continuity. Mandatory incident reporting will form part of the framework, building on advisory guidelines issued last year for operators.
“The DIA will be a major step to ensure that Singapore’s digital infrastructure is sustainable, resilient and cyber-secure, and importantly, able to meet future demands,” says Tan, urging continued industry engagement as Parliament considers the bill.
The proposed legislation builds on Singapore’s green data centre roadmap launched in May 2024 and an energy-efficiency standard released in June 2025, signalling a shift from guidance to enforceable obligations as AI-driven demand accelerates.
