South African data centres leading global charge

Microsoft, one of the world’s largest data centre (DC) providers with over 200 facilities under its Azure brand, recently announced an effort to increase environmental sustainability by integrating closed-loop cooling systems into its DCs.
Interestingly, when MyBroadband visited one of Teraco’s DCs in 2024, we were told that the facility had already implemented this technology as part of its sustainability drive.
Teraco said that JB3, the DC we visited, needs roughly 300,000 litres of water to cool its IT infrastructure.
Similarly, Microsoft said each of its data centres consumes roughly 125 million litres of water yearly, making the current technology extremely unsustainable.
To solve this problem, it plans to use closed-loop cooling technology, which means the water pumped into the cooling system upon construction will never be replaced.
The key to this is zero-water evaporation, which requires that the water continually circulates between servers and chillers to dissipate heat without needing a fresh water supply.
DC operators measure their water efficiency by Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE).
While Microsoft said it achieved a WUE of 0.3 litres per kilowatt hour of IT load in its past fiscal year, Teraco, on the other hand, achieved a third of this — 0.1 ℓ/kWh.
Teraco said this was achieved using the same zero-water evaporation closed-loop system as Microsft plans to implement, where roof chillers cool the water before it is used to chill air fed into the IT infrastructure cooling system.
“As a leading data centre operator, we understand the resource demands of our operations and are dedicated to reducing our consumption intensity through investments in energy and water efficient technologies,” Teraco CEO Jan Hnizdo said in the company’s recent sustainability report.
Teraco has also implemented several initiatives to improve energy efficiency, achieving a power usage effectiveness of 1.52 in 2023 thanks to its cooling system, according to the report.
It also managed to save 3,112,232 kWh of potential energy demand, avoiding more than 3,065 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent during the year thanks to this level of energy efficiency.


Teraco has also set the goal of using 50% clean energy by 2027 and 100% by 2035. By this time, it aims to have 200MW of utility-scale solar energy, which it believes will require R3.5 billion to build.
This will prevent roughly 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per annum.
Given the introduction of AI computing, the increased energy demand from data centres has been a significant talking point in the industry, especially in South Africa, where energy security is not guaranteed.
So far, the DC operator has built 6MW of rooftop solar systems and aims to increase this to 10MW by next year.
It has also broken ground on the construction of a 120MW utility-scale solar plant in the Free State, which is expected to come online by late 2026.
Once complete, the plant will produce more than 354,000 MWh annually, which it will wheel to its data centres in Durban, Johannesburg, and Cape Town.
Eskom allocated the data centre operator the grid capacity in February, and the remainder of the time has been spent finalising the plant design and wheeling arrangements.
Energy wheeling, which allows power to be moved from an independent energy producer to end users in urban areas via existing transmission and distribution networks, has been negotiated with the Cape Town and Ekurhuleni municipalities.
Teraco has several data centres in these municipalities.
“Teraco considers this project essential to achieving its renewable energy ambitions and believes it will pave the way for other municipality renewable energy wheeling projects,” says Teraco head of sustainability Bryce Allan.
“This will ultimately assist municipalities in attracting new investments and remaining competitive as local and international companies become increasingly sensitive to the carbon intensity of their electricity supply.”