Chadchart admits laws lag behind Data Centers, plans to review zoning and EIA

The equity and derivatives market strategist at InnovestX Research, InnovestX Securities, said efforts to push Thailand as a regional data center hub are taking clearer shape after the first meeting of the Data Center Business Policy Committee resolved to accelerate integration of data and legal provisions into a single dashboard, in order to set a clear industrial strategic framework within one month. The criteria define data centers using more than 2 MW of electricity as industrial businesses, set resource utilization fees to reflect true direct and indirect costs, and impose strict energy conditions to support Green Data Centers, including a separate electricity tariff category for the group, a mandatory clean energy share of no less than 60% to meet Net Zero goals, and tighter standards for backup power systems. Four subcommittees will be set up covering the economy, infrastructure, land and buildings, and the environment to draw up technical standards, and decisive measures are being prepared to suspend water and electricity allocation for projects not yet under construction if they fail the criteria. InnovestX assesses that these clearer policies will create significant positive ripple effects for two main industries. The first is clean energy, where the 60% minimum clean energy requirement will turn clean power from an option into a necessity, sharply driving real demand. The second is industrial estates, where classifying data centers as industrial businesses will draw foreign direct investment, or FDI, into leading estates equipped with smart grid networks and environmental management, leaving estates reliant on fossil fuels far behind. The investment strategy therefore recommends Selective Buy, focusing on accumulating leaders in these two main industries. For industrial estates, it favors companies with stable smart grid networks sufficient for Tier 3-4 data centers, joint ventures with multinational technology firms, and their own water recycling management systems, namely AMATA and WHA. For clean energy, it favors companies making progress on direct power purchase agreements, or Direct PPAs, with global hyperscalers, with high ESG scores and green certificates, and investing in battery energy storage systems, or BESS, to maintain the stability of electricity supplied to data centers, namely GULF, GPSC and BGRIM, as well as GUNKUL, a contractor for high-voltage transmission line systems.

CleanSpark Inc.'s debut junk-bond offering for a data center tied to Meta Platforms Inc. drew orders of about $10 billion, more than four times the deal's size, according to people familiar with the matter. The five-year notes were set at almost $2.28 billion and launched at 98.5 cents on the dollar to yield 8.25%, roughly 1.75 percentage points above the average for BB rated firms tracked by Bloomberg. The fundraising, led by Morgan Stanley, will help finance construction of a data center in Sandersville, Georgia, that has been fully leased to Anviran LLC, a Meta subsidiary, under a $6.6 billion, 20-year contract. The facility is expected to begin operations in the fourth quarter of 2027, with Meta guaranteeing rent and operating expenses. Data center developers have now sold more than $3 billion of high-yield bonds so far this year, most backed by long-term leases with hyperscalers including Oracle Corp. and Amazon.com Inc.