Across the globe countries are responding to the surge in data center development in different ways. Thailand, one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia and with an ambitious high-technology sector, has increasingly become a key destination for data center projects, beyond the capacity of the Thai planning system. Government interventions announced in September 2026 are designed to provide a regime capable of handling new projects without losing the wave of investment.

Thailand officially has 35 data centers in operation, with 49 more under construction and 117 projects awaiting approval. Government ministers admit that planning controls are so ineffective that many more are likely operating illegally or identified as other types of buildings. The total capacity operating in the country is estimated to be between 250 MW and 350 MW.

Approvals are currently handled separately by electricity utilities, water authorities and local building regulators. With no national plan or single classification for a data center, many have been registered and approved under categories such as warehousing, resulting in facilities whose noise, power demands and on-site fuel storage make them inappropriate for their neighborhoods.

The Thai Board of Investment (BOI) approved 88 AI and data center projects with a total investment of around $27 billion (886 billion baht) in the first six months of 2026, after approving a record $19 billion (634 billion baht) in 2025, up from $3 billion (100 billion baht) in 2024. Much of the volume comes from large AI projects proposed by hyperscalers including Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Other projects are believed to have begun without BOI approval.

In July 2026, the Thai government promised to tighten data center rules and, in September, it announced a pause on all projects under construction and in the approval queue. Agencies have been given one month to develop new criteria for future projects and provide oversight for existing data centers. This is to ensure that future projects have the necessary infrastructure and benefit the country.

Increasing scrutiny

The pause follows a series of announcements designed to regulate data centers and upgrade infrastructure.

In August 2026, the Energy Regulatory Commission of Thailand (ERC) announced a special tariff (Category 9) for data center electricity use, set at $0.18 (6 baht) per kilowatt-hour, roughly double the domestic tariff. This is intended to pay for needed upgrades and help fund the ERC's existing program of progressive reductions in domestic tariffs.

Data center operators are being invited to join a pilot program of power purchase agreements (PPAs) that allow them to buy renewable electricity directly from generators, but do not let them completely avoid system costs. Operators will still have to pay for balancing services, grid losses, backup supply and other costs associated with maintaining secure access to the national electricity system.

Developers will soon have to pay a commitment fee to discourage phantom applicants, similar to measures in Texas (US) under the state's Senate Bill 6 and in the UK, where energy regulator Ofgem has proposed a pay-to-stay scheme (see Cutting grid connection queues: the UK's pay-to-stay plan and State governments act to control power demand). The ERC has proposed that projects pay a power guarantee of $135,000 (4.5 million baht) per megawatt, returned in stages when the project is energized or forfeited if it fails to complete within 5-7 years. This is due to be implemented in the fourth quarter of 2026.

The Thai government has also published a draft data center definition and instituted a data center policy board to oversee strategy and regulations. The board announced the pause at its first meeting on September 4, 2026.

Two days earlier, addressing a smaller-scale crisis in Bangkok, the capital's governor, Chadchart Sittipunt, paused approvals in the city when a warehouse built next to a hospital was found to be a data center storing fuel for standby power. Bangkok is not a focus of large-scale projects: it has had six applications for standalone (colocation) data centers since 2021, all under 23 MW. It already has dozens of small operational enterprise facilities. Three of the standalone facilities have been completed, but approvals for the remaining projects are paused.

New rules in progress

The data center policy board has set a short timescale for the national planning reset, stressing that the Thai government wants to reopen swiftly for investment under a coordinated national digital infrastructure strategy that will generate jobs, income and technological benefits for the country.

The goal is a single, competitive approval process, expected to work alongside a new licensing scheme led by the Thai National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC).

This will assess projects for conformance with national goals, which include developing AI tools for Thai businesses, reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 47% compared with 2019 levels by 2035, and reaching net zero by 2050. Even without data centers driving up electricity use, the two emissions goals are challenging, since 70% of the country's electricity comes from fossil fuels.

As a first step toward a national approval scheme, the board has called for a dashboard that brings together information from multiple sources, including project locations, water and electricity sources, community impacts and local regulations.

It has tasked four committees to report by early October 2026 (one month from the policy board's meeting) on:

• Economic benefits, including tax revenue and employment.
• Infrastructure, to ensure data centers do not crowd out public access to water, electricity and digital networks.
• Approved locations for buildings, substations and backup fuel-storage facilities.
• Environmental standards for data centers, including procedures for inspections.

Many questions remain unanswered, including whether such a national policy can be developed in such a short time. The board needs to clarify how any policy will ensure data center operators support grid upgrades and clean-energy investments, as well as how it will prioritize those projects it considers worth approval.

The board also needs to set a threshold for the data center policy. It has previously rejected a proposal to regulate all data centers greater than 2 MW as industrial factories and is expected to set a higher threshold in its eventual policy.