Malaysia’s new data centers create thousands of jobs — and worries about power and water shortages

When Granill Ding Simon moved to the Malaysian state of Johor six years ago, the mechanical engineer traded city life for what he thought would be a slower pace among palm-oil plantations and beaches. Since then, Johor’s rapid transition into a data center hub has drawn him into one of the world’s hottest tech sectors.

Big tech firms including Google, Amazon, Nvidia, and Alibaba have committed investments in Malaysia’s data centers in recent years, tapping into the growing demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing in Southeast Asia. Malaysia is adding data center capacity at the fastest pace in the Asia-Pacific region, with some 850 MW in potential electricity demand announced in the first half of 2024 alone. 

Johor, the southern state which borders Singapore, has drawn about 50 data center projects in the last three years, including from ByteDance and Microsoft. The total capacity of data centers in Johor, including those that are under construction or in the planning stage, has grown 100 times in the last five years, according to research firm DC Byte.

“My new data center role pays double what I was earning,” the 31-year-old, who previously worked on a railway project, told Rest of World. “Earlier, the oil and gas sector paid engineers the highest wages in the country, but now data centers are offering the same or more.”

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