Digital Edge secures green loan for South Korea datacentre

Singapore-based datacentre provider Digital Edge has secured its first green loan to finance the first phase of development of its new colocation facility in South Korea.

Dubbed SEL2, the 100MW datacentre, the largest of its kind in South Korea, will leverage Digital Edge’s next generation architecture to achieve energy efficiency, including realising an annualised design power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.27, significantly below the global industry average of 1.55.

The company will also leverage fuel cell technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and generate electricity with more predictable energy costs and greater reliability to power the general lighting and energy for the datacentre’s shell and core. 

To be a Digital Edge “green” project and financed by a green loan, the project must meet certain environmentally linked eligibility criteria. The green loan is structured referencing the latest Green Loan Principles published by the Loan Market Association, Asia Pacific Loan Market Association and the Loan Syndications and Trading Association.

The financing consortium includes both international and domestic banks and the loan will be issued in two tranches, a fixed tranche and a floating tranche over a five-year term. The joint green loan co-ordinators for the financing were Crédit Agricole CIB and ING.

Jonathan Walbridge, Digital Edge’s chief financial officer, said the green loan is a key milestone in the company’s growth journey, and is “evidence of how the economic performance of our platform goes hand in hand with our commitments to sustainability”.

Martijn Hoogerwerf, ING’s head of sustainable finance in Asia-Pacific, said the datacentre financing will further enhance Digital Edge’s rapid growth, and boast best-in-class energy efficiency, thereby reducing its carbon footprint.

“At ING, we want to create a positive impact in the net-zero transition and have set ourselves a target for sustainable finance volume mobilised. We are proud to partner with like-minded firms such as Digital Edge in our commitment to this ambition,” he added.

SEL2, Digital Edge’s third datacentre facility in South Korea, is located in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon. When ready by the third quarter of 2024, it will meet the growing demand for datacentre services from local and international cloud providers, as well as other high power density applications.

The company previously announced this project in April 2022 and has already secured an anchor tenant for the first phase of the facility. The expected total project costs for the entire campus will be KRW 1 trillion, or about $1bn.

Besides South Korea, Digital Edge provides colocation datacentre and interconnection services in China, India, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines. Last September, it announced a new a 23MW colocation facility in Jakarta.

The new facility will offer 3,430 cabinets and is designed for high power density applications from cloud-driven hyperscale deployments, as well as local and international network and financial service providers. When completed by the fourth quarter of 2023, it is expected to be the largest datacentre in downtown Jakarta.