Singapore-headquartered Bridge Data Centres (BDC) has successfully completed a pilot project using hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), supplied by biofuels firm EcoCeres, as backup fuel for its data centre campuses in Asia Pacific.
The biofuel, which is entirely derived from waste-based feedstock, serves as a direct substitute for conventional fossil diesel and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90 per cent, Bain Capital-backed BDC said in a statement today.
“The pilot covered the full range of emergency backup power scenarios, including generator startup, load transfer and sustained operations under data centre conditions, with all performance and emissions targets met,” the company said.
BDC has completed large-scale HVO testing across multiple locations, and said it intends to deploy the biofuel across its regional data centre campuses given the success of the pilot project.
“The success of our inaugural pilot in Asia Pacific demonstrates that HVO-powered backup fuel is a feasible and replicable concept for other high-growth data centre markets,” said BDC chief executive Eric Fan.
“As AI workloads continue to scale across the region, we are committed to advancing innovative clean energy solutions that reduce our carbon footprint while meeting the performance and reliability requirements of our hyperscale customers,” Fan added.
BDC will also extend its collaboration with EcoCeres, which is headquartered in Hong Kong, to develop common standards and practical guidelines for broader HVO adoption across the data centre industry.
Matti Lievonen, chief executive officer of EcoCeres, said that the pilot project proved that waste-based renewable fuels can meet stringent reliability and performance requirements in existing diesel backup systems, offering the industry a pathway to significantly reduce emissions while maintaining reliability.
The pilot project’s completion comes as a recent report by the International Energy Agency revealed that the rising energy demand of data centres, driven by a boom in artificial intelligence (AI) use, is outpacing gains in energy efficiency and climate solutions that use the technology.
BDC and EcoCeres have been working on the project for a year, following a memorandum of understanding signed by both parties in May 2025 to test HVO as a back up fuel. It is part of the data centre operator’s broader efforts to seek alternative energy sources for its data centres, including a separate partnership signed in March with Concord New Energy to develop Singapore’s first barge-based hydrogen power generation solution.
BDC has also signed a letter of intent with Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research’s (A*STAR’s) Institute of High Performance Computing and engineering consultancy HY to assess the feasibility of nuclear power as an alternative clean energy source for next-generation artificial data centres.
