NEW CLARK CITY — State-run Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) has dispelled assumptions that hyperscale data centers, whose energy requirements are enough to power as many as 100,000 households, would be constructed under the proposed Pax Silica artificial intelligence (AI) industrial hub.

BCDA President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joshua Bingcang said the current energy and water capacity of New Clark City in Tarlac province, the site of the industrial hub, is insufficient to meet the requirements of these AI-ready data centers.

“Even if we invite hyperscalers, they will not go here,” Bingcang said during a media roundtable on Friday, Aug. 7.

Hyperscale data centers are facilities designed to support large-scale workloads of some of the world’s biggest technology companies, including Google and Meta.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) said these data centers consume around 100 megawatts (MW), equivalent to the electricity consumption of as many as 100,000 households annually.

A 100-MW data center is estimated to consume around two million liters of water per day, equivalent to the water needs of 6,500 households.

Bingcang said these requirements are simply far beyond what New Clark City can offer, especially since BCDA is still pursuing projects to upgrade its power and water capacity.

In fact, he said an American company that had planned to invest in a hyperscale data center within the property has since opted to invest in Malaysia because of the existing resource gap.

While at least two companies involved in data center operations have already expressed interest in participating in the industrial hub, Bingcang noted that it is likely these potential investments would go elsewhere.

BCDA’s clarification on the non-inclusion of hyperscale data centers comes as environmental groups step up their opposition to the potential impact of these facilities on power bills and water resources.

It also runs counter to the Department of Information and Communications Technology’s (DICT) estimate that data centers in the industrial hub could have a capacity of at least 400 MW.

DICT Secretary Henry Aguda even said the site could further expand its data center capacity given recent efforts in other parts of the world to restrict the expansion of these facilities.

Aguda also said he is hoping to bring Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), the cloud computing arm of Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, to the project as one of its potential locators.

According to Bingcang, BCDA has already informed the DICT that hyperscale data centers would not be part of the industrial hub.

Instead, the project may only see the establishment of smaller data centers that would support companies’ data storage needs, which would have much lower energy and water requirements.

The industrial hub, he said, will focus on the manufacturing of components for AI compute, or the hardware that makes AI models operational.

This means the project, which will span a 1,619-hectare (ha) site, will largely revolve around the production of semiconductors, which are the enabling technology behind AI.

The industrial hub is part of the Philippines’ commitment under the Pax Silica partnership, which was established to bring allied countries together to secure the global AI supply chain and counter China’s dominance in the sector.

Pax Silica is a global partnership led by the United States (US) and includes members such as Israel, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom (UK), and the European Union (EU).