Singapore telecommunications conglomerate Singtel, through its data centre subsidiaries DC West and DC Kim Chuan, has secured a S$535 million ( US$401.1 million ) five-year green loan, its first green loan, from  DBS, OCBC, Standard Chartered Bank and UOB. These banks have also been appointed as green loan coordinators.

Singtel will use the loan proceeds to refinance the borrowings and support the operations of its West and Kim Chuan data centres, which must maintain at least a Green Mark GoldPlus certification from Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority as part of the loan criteria. Both data centres have already attained the highest green building certification, Green Mark Platinum.

Singtel is one of Singapore’s largest and most advanced data centre operators. The two centres offer a combined 62 megawatts ( MW ) of capacity. As well, the telco recently broke ground on its third centre in Singaore DC Tuas, a new hyper-connected 58MW green data centre, DC Tuas.

“We will build on the success of our sustainability-linked loans, bonds and other efforts, to further expand our portfolio of green financing initiatives under Olives, Singtel Group’s sustainable financing programme,” says Arthur Lang, the group’s chief financial officer. “We will also continue exploring ways to incorporate technologies such as liquid cooling and AI to further improve the efficiency of all our data centres, including our upcoming DC Tuas.”