Two major green initiatives have been announced in Asia Pacific, with FoxConn launching an environmentally friendly data center in China, while the Green Grid Association announced a new movement to promote energy efficiency in the region’s datacenter and telecoms sectors.

Members of the newly launched TGG (The Green Grid) Singapore interest group will collaborate with data center operators and government agencies to design energy efficiency into next-generation data centers, said its spokesman Roger Tipley, who is also VP global industry and government alliances at Schneider Electric.

As a priority the group will investigate the possibilities for higher ambient temperatures in data centers and improving energy efficiency of data center operations in tropical environments.

As globalization forces the consolidation of IT into key regional hubs, Singapore is positioning itself as one of Southeast Asia's leaders, said Tipley.

“Investing in energy-efficient IT contributes to economic growth and optimized resource use across all industry sectors while achieving bottom-line results for businesses,” he said, “We welcome experts to join us and contribute to the TGG Singapore Interest Group and its development projects."

In China, Foxconn has built what is described as a green tunnel-like data center in Guiyang, southwestern China. The design criteria for the facility is based on minimizing energy consumption, according to Foxconn, which claims the facility has an average PUE (power usage effectiveness) below 1.1.

It achieves this through a natural ventilation system for cooling and dispensing with  backup temperature control system. Foxconn said it does not need a cooling system as the data center is a fourth-generation containerized facility with specialized servers produced in a joint venture set up by Foxconn and Hewlett-Packard (HP).

Foxconn hopes that the data center will help Guixzhou province become a cloud computing center in China. Three telecoms carriers - China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom – have expressed interest in establishing data centers in the region,  said Foxconn. They will initially use the data center for storing, processing and hosting data from existing clients.