Lotte Innovate will take part in a national research and development project to innovate data center energy efficiency and achieve carbon neutrality.
Lotte Innovate said on the 2nd that it will join a consortium led by the Ajou University-Industry Cooperation Foundation to carry out the project "development of thermal management technology for data center carbon neutrality." The project is part of "2026 research and development for new battery and electrical and electronic fields," led by the Korea Planning&Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT).
This research and development project aims to reduce energy use and achieve carbon neutrality in conventional air-cooled data centers. It focuses on securing technologies including a fiber-optic sensing–based distributed temperature sensing system (DTS), an artificial intelligence (AI) thermal management system, a high-efficiency in-rack cooling system, and demonstrations in actual data centers. The consortium plans to develop a next-generation in-rack cooling system that combines multiscale distributed sensing with AI to overcome the limits of conventional air cooling.
A Lotte Innovate official said, "As the AI industry grows, the adoption of high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) is increasing, raising power density per rack, and improving data center power usage effectiveness (PUE) and cutting carbon emissions have emerged as core tasks for the industry," and added, "Because rising power density directly leads to increased carbon emissions, it is essential to introduce next-generation thermal management technologies that can maximize efficiency beyond the limits of conventional air cooling."
Lotte Innovate aims to achieve a PUE of 1.2 or lower by conducting data center–based demonstrations and validation. If the technology is applied to data centers operating in Seoul and Yongin and achieves a PUE of 1.2, it is expected to reduce annual carbon emissions by about 22,000 tons.
According to data from the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, as of last year the total annual power consumption of domestic data centers reached about 8.2 terawatt-hours (TWh). Analysis suggests that improving PUE from 1.5 to 1.2 through this research project could reduce annual carbon emissions by about 684,000 tons.
In the consortium, Lotte Innovate is participating jointly with the Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials (KIMM), Chung-Ang University, and SM Instrument, and over about five years they will jointly carry out detailed research projects.
A Lotte Innovate official said, "Based on the technologies secured through this national research and development project, we will advance our data center DBO (design, build, operate) business and provide differentiated, eco-friendly data center solutions."