In sprawling, windowless warehouses across the world, armies of servers hum like digital heartbeats. Rows of memory chips, snaking multicoloured cables, winding circuits and rapidly spinning fans communicate ceaselessly to process exponential amounts of data in real time, powering everything from cloud storage to artificial intelligence (AI) systems. These concrete fortresses are at the backbone of global connectivity, and their prevalence is multiplying.

But not without a cost. Data centres are one of the fastest-growing industries worldwide. They have become as commonplace as grocery stores in US areas such as Northern Virginia, Arizona and Nevada, consuming as much electricity as a small town. And this is only set to increase due to the ongoing institutionalisation of the data centre segment and its strong industry fundamentals.

According to the 2024 CBRE Global Data Center Investor Intentions Survey released in June, 92 percent of respondents are allocatin