According to the information provided by union minister of state for electronics and information technology, and commerce and industry to Rajya Sabha, the government is democratising the development and usage of technology. Data centres are an important and integral component of the overall digital India infrastructure ecosystem.
The data centre industry in India has been growing at a steady pace. The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing is driving increasing demand for data centre capacity in the country.
Data centres are located across the country majorly in areas such as Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi NCR and Jamnagar. The installed capacity has grown from 375 MW in 2020 to current capacity of about 1575 MW.
The data centre industry is now further expanding in states like Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal which are coming up as new investment destinations.
The current data centres capacity across the country is less than 1 per cent of the current installed power capacity. As per Central Electricity Authority (CEA), ministry of Power (MoP), the power demand of data centres is estimated to be about 17 GW up to 2031-32.
The Government of India is promoting renewable energy through measures such as Green Energy Open Access Rules, Green Energy Corridor Scheme, Green Term Ahead Market (GTAM), National Green Hydrogen Mission, National Programme on High Efficiency Solar PV Modules, Offshore Wind VGF Scheme and Solar Park Scheme.
Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act, has been enacted to strengthen reliable clean power for emerging sectors such as AI and data centres, including future deployment of Small Modular and Micro Nuclear Reactors.
Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), through technical committee LITD 31 (Cloud Computing, IT and Data Centres), has published a series of Indian standards on power usage effectiveness, carbon usage effectiveness (CUE), cooling efficiency ratio (CER), water usage effectiveness (WUE) related to data centres.
The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) has notified Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC 2017) and Energy Conservation and Sustainable Building Code (ECSBC 2024) prescribing energy efficiency and water conservation norms for buildings, including provisions relevant to data centres.
The water requirement of data centres depends on the type of cooling technologies deployed. Regulation and control of groundwater extraction, including for industrial purposes, is governed by the guidelines issued by the ministry of Jal Shakti. With the advancement of AI infrastructure, data centre cooling systems are also adopting advanced technologies such as direct-to-chip liquid cooling, adiabatic cooling, immersion cooling and closed-loop liquid cooling systems.
Industry is also deploying high density racks to efficiently support high‑performance computing and AI workloads for further reduction of power and water consumption.
These initiatives collectively provide a framework for electricity consumption and energy efficiency, renewable energy use, energy reuse, cooling efficiency, carbon emissions and water usage.