Hong Kong Data Center Cooling Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends & Forecasts (2025 - 2030)

Hong Kong Data Center Cooling Market Trends and Insights

Strong Hyperscale Pipeline Backed by HK Submarine-Cable Connectivity

Hong Kong hosts 13 active submarine systems that land in Tseung Kwan O and other coastal precincts, allowing hyperscale operators to interconnect east-west traffic with minimal latency.^{[1]SUNeVision, “MEGA Plus Connectivity Advantages,” sunevision.com} The clustering effect created by these landing sites compresses land availability and raises rack-density expectations, which in turn compels the Hong Kong data center cooling market to specify higher chilled-water setpoints, larger distribution pipework, and modular heat-rejection blocks at inception. Operators such as SUNeVision design cooling plants capable of scaling from enterprise-style 12 kW racks to AI racks, surpassing 30 kW without ripping out existing infrastructure. Demand for instant connectivity also shortens leasing cycles, requiring chilled-water plants to achieve design PUE in under twelve months, a timetable that favors prefabricated cooling modules.

Mandatory “Green Lease” Clauses from Top Colocation Landlords

Global Switch stipulates PUE below 1.4 across its Asia-Pacific estate, and tenants that fall out of compliance face penalty clauses or renewal risks. Equinix HK4, meanwhile, achieved a 30% drop in cooling energy by integrating free-air economizer controls funded in part by CLP Power.^{[2]NVIDIA Corporation, “DGX B200 System Specifications,” nvidia.com}These contractual mechanisms push tenants to upgrade cooling coils, raise chilled-water temperatures, and adopt active aisle-containment or rear-door heat exchangers more quickly than their own capital-planning cycles would have dictated. The Hong Kong data center cooling market, therefore, benefits from predictable retrofit volumes driven by landlord compliance audits.

Soaring Rack Densities from AI Clusters (greater than 30 kW/rack)

NVIDIA DGX B200 servers draw roughly 14.3 kW each, and eight chassis in a rack breach 30 kW, well beyond the thermal envelope of raised-floor air distribution. Vertiv’s CoolLoop trim cooler addresses these loads with supply-water temperatures at 40 °C that still deliver 70% annual energy savings compared with conventional CRAH deployments. The immediate implication for the Hong Kong data center cooling market is a non-negotiable shift toward liquid media that can transport 1,000-plus W per square meter without recirculation hotspots. Facility operators no longer treat liquid cooling as an optional overlay; it now constitutes the core strategy around which power, white-space layout, and service corridors are arranged.

Government 2050 Carbon-Neutral Roadmap Incentivises ≤1.4 PUE

Hong Kong’s Climate Action Plan earmarks USD 47 billion for territory-wide efficiency incentives, including accelerated depreciation on high-COP chillers and soft loans for waste-heat recovery loops. The Buildings Energy Efficiency Ordinance mandates decade-interval energy audits, a requirement that positions cooling upgrades as the most immediate route to compliance for data-center landlords. At the district level, the Kai Tak cooling plant uses seawater intakes to cut electricity use by 35% and save 85 million kWh annually.^{[3]Electrical and Mechanical Services Department, “Kai Tak District Cooling System,” emsd.gov.hk} These policy signals lock in a long-term growth runway for the Hong Kong data center cooling market as operators align expansion plans with territorial decarbonization milestones.

Scarcity and High Cost of Power Feeders from CLP Power and HK Electric

New feeder circuits require multi-stage sign-offs that can add 18 months to hyperscale build schedules, raising capitalized interest costs and delaying cooling-plant commissioning. Operators, therefore, push the Hong Kong data center cooling market toward ultra-efficient heat-exchanger loops, elevated chilled-water return temperatures, and variable-speed drives on pumps that flatten demand peaks inside constrained power envelopes. As electricity tariffs remain among the region’s highest, colocation tenants evaluate total landed-cost models where every incremental watt saved on cooling improves gross-margin sensitivity.

Limited Qualified Labour for Immersion-Ready White-Space Retrofits

Immersion cooling requires technicians trained in dielectric-fluid handling, leak-detection regimes, and pressure-balanced tank installation. LiquidStack had to run dedicated certification tracks for local contractors to deploy its 2-phase systems that reach PUE 1.01. The scarcity inflates installation quotes and pushes project owners to bundle training packages with equipment orders, embedding a services premium into the Hong Kong data center cooling market that is reflected in the 20.4% CAGR forecast for the services segment.

Segment Analysis

By Data Center Type: Hyperscalers Drive Liquid Cooling Innovation

Hyperscalers accounted for a 45.6% Hong Kong data center cooling market share in 2024, and their planned expansions position the segment to post a 20.7% CAGR through 2030. These large builds incorporate dedicated chilled-water loops for AI zones, rear-door heat-exchanger rows for general compute, and immersion pods for training clusters. The Hong Kong data center cooling market must therefore supply modular pumping skids, quick-disconnect manifolds, and rack-level coolant distribution units that allow phased deployment without production outages. 

Enterprise and edge facilities trail in absolute spend yet experiment with hybrid solutions that couple aisle-containment airflows with localized liquid loops for GPU racks. This mixed adoption demonstrates how hyperscale standards cascade down the ecosystem: once supply chains for cold plates, leak-sealed hoses, and fluid sensors mature, total-cost-of-ownership curves converge, prompting second-tier operators to adopt similar architectures. Consequently, consultancy firms report a surge in design-build inquiries that reference hyperscale specification sheets as de-facto industry baselines.

Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase

By Tier Type: Tier 4 Facilities Embrace Advanced Cooling

Tier 3 sites owned 63.2% of the Hong Kong data center cooling market size in 2024, anchored by legacy builds that prioritize predictable PUE outcomes over redundancy. Tier 4 pipelines, however, are projected to climb at 21.2% CAGR, reflecting demand for 99.995% uptime that necessitates N+N cooling redundancy with dual chilled-water headers, isolated containment zones, and emergency heat-rejection modules. 

The stringent approval cycle—often 24 months for fire-safety, structural, and power-interface reviews—rewards designs that reuse validated component lists, further channeling procurement toward multinational vendors with documented reliability records. Tier 1 and Tier 2 footprints remain cost-focused, selecting high-COP air-handling units over immersion setups, yet even these facilities now reserve floor space for future liquid skids, indicating the pervasive influence of higher-tier resilience metrics.

By Cooling Technology: Liquid Solutions Gain Momentum

Air-based cooling maintained 66.1% revenue within the Hong Kong data center cooling market in 2024, but liquid solutions headline the growth story with a 21.3% forward CAGR. Direct-to-chip plates transport heat loads exceeding 350 W per processor while returning coolant at 45 °C, a parameter that unlocks heat-reuse loops for domestic-hot-water or district-cooling tie-ins. Immersion baths, meanwhile, remove up to 200 kW per rack, reshaping white-space ceiling heights, fire-suppression layouts, and raised-floor grid densities. 

Legacy chillers and CRAH rows are not disappearing overnight. Instead, operators layer liquid circuits onto existing plant rooms, creating hybrid arrays where air handles baseline IT loads and liquid loops intercept AI blades. Such dual-path architectures help mitigate downtime risks during technology migration, a factor driving procurement managers to favor vendor-agnostic manifolds and quick-swap cold plates.

By Component: Services Segment Accelerates Growth

Equipment purchases represented 78.4% of the Hong Kong data center cooling market size in 2024, spanning chillers, pumps, dry-coolers, containment panels, and control systems. Nevertheless, the services slice is projected to grow at 20.4% CAGR as complexity rises. Design-assist engagements now cover CFD simulations for multi-storey airflow, fluid-compatibility testing for dielectric media, and digital-twin modeling for predictive maintenance. 

Maintenance contracts expand to fluid sampling, particulate filtration, and leak-alarm calibration that differ markedly from filter-change routines in air systems. Vendor training academies supply immersion-specific certifications to mitigate the labour shortage. Additionally, performance-based service level agreements link fees to achieved PUE or water-usage effectiveness targets, effectively converting service providers into risk-sharing partners.

Geography Analysis

Hong Kong’s Tseung Kwan O district concentrates more than one-third of active server halls, clustering around dual cable stations and district-cooling conduits that feed adjacent industrial plots. The supply pipeline is set to rise from 317 MW in 2023 to about 700 MW by 2028, doubling the cooling load requirement. This escalation cements the Hong Kong data center cooling market as a cornerstone infrastructure layer for the Greater Bay digital-economy blueprint. 

Coastal exposure introduces typhoon-induced salt-spray corrosion that shortens condenser-coil lifecycles. Operators respond with epoxy-coated tube sheets, seawater-compatible titanium plates, and hurricane-rated louver systems. Simultaneously, seawater-intake pilots in Kai Tak and Tseung Kwan O illustrate how large delta-T loops can leverage ambient water at 23 °C, reducing tower plume drift and trimming make-up water consumption. 

Vertical data-center designs, necessitated by land scarcity, pose intricate coolant-distribution challenges. Engineers deploy risers with pressure-independent balancing valves and branch isolation headers every two floors to control column height pressure drops. The Hong Kong data center cooling market, therefore, now incorporates seismic snubbers, quick-close dampers, and redundancy logic that addresses both vertical stacking and seismic considerations.