Our industry is engaged in an important dialogue to improve the efficiency and resilience of real assets through transparency and industry collaboration. This article is a contribution to this larger conversation and does not necessarily reflect GRESB’s position.
Data centers are rapidly emerging as an institutional asset class across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. But as capital scales, the investment question is evolving from where to invest to which assets will retain their value over the long term.
The Asia Pacific Data Centre Investment Landscape 2026 report by Cushman & Wakefield projects more than USD 280 billion of development CapEx through 2030, with operational data center asset values across 14 APAC markets expected to exceed USD 950 billion (Cushman & Wakefield 2026).
This scale of capital demands a more sophisticated understanding of sustainability performance.
Today, sustainability is often assessed through operational metrics such as energy efficiency, renewable energy procurement, or water performance. But for an institutional investor, the more important question is:
Does the sustainability performance of an asset improve its long-term economic resilience and protect its future value?
The answer increasingly depends on decisions made long before the asset becomes operational.
Climate risk assessments, embodied carbon reduction, material selection, cooling architecture, energy and water efficiency, adaptability, renewable energy integration, and design for future AI workloads can materially influence lifecycle cost and the potential for technological obsolescence.
This becomes particularly important as green loans and sustainability-linked financing become more prominent in data center capital markets. More than USD 43 billion of operator debt was raised across APAC during 2025 and year-to-date 2026, including significant green financing.
But a green loan or Sustainability-Linked Loan (SLL) should not, by itself, be interpreted as evidence of a valuable asset.
For financial and institutional investors, the next level of diligence should be to understand what sustainability performance is being financed, how material those targets are, and whether they translate into measurable lifecycle benefits.
This means looking beyond a headline KPI to ask:
Does the sustainability target reduce lifecycle operating costs? Does it reduce future retrofit CapEx? Does it improve resilience to power, water, and regulatory constraints? Does it extend the asset’s competitive life? And ultimately, does it protect income and residual value?
This is where lifecycle intelligence matters.
Lifecycle intelligence can provide the missing connection between design decisions, sustainability performance, financing, and valuation.
It allows investors to evaluate an asset across its entire lifecycle—from design, conceptualization, and procurement through construction efficiency, operational performance, adaptability, future CapEx, and eventual residual value.
Complementing it with an independent data center assessment provides a standardized, third-party reference point on material issues while assessing the transparency and completeness of disclosures, creating a more complete investment picture.
Because valuation is ultimately linked to income and risk, sustainability performance can influence value through both sides of the equation.
A more resilient, adaptable, and efficient asset may therefore have the potential to protect income, reduce risk, and preserve residual value. Conversely, an asset with high lifecycle carbon, inefficient systems, or significant future retrofit requirements could carry hidden costs that today’s valuation may not fully capture.
As APAC data centers move deeper into institutional ownership, green financing and SLLs will need to be accompanied by much deeper asset-level sustainability and lifecycle analysis.
The question should no longer be simply “Is this a green asset?”
It should be:
“How does its sustainability performance affect its lifecycle economics, resilience, risk profile, and value over the next 10–20 years?”
That is the role of lifecycle intelligence—turning sustainability data into investment intelligence, enabling institutional investors and lenders to establish a more informed price point today and a more defensible view of asset value tomorrow.
Sources
- Cushman & Wakefield. 2026. Asia Pacific Data Centre Investment Landscape. https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/insights/apac-data-centre-investment-landscape
This article was written by Ruchika Malhotra, Co-Founder and ESG & Sustainability Head at MoruBld AI. Learn more about MoruBld AI here.
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