Lotte Innovate joins national R&D consortium for carbon-neutral data centers

Lotte Innovate will participate in a national research and development project aimed at improving data center energy efficiency and achieving carbon neutrality, using the opportunity to strengthen its technical capabilities for expanding its design-build-operate, or DBO, business.

The company announced Monday it is joining a consortium led by Ajou University's Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation to carry out a project titled "Heat Management Technology Development for Carbon-Neutral Data Centers." The project is part of the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology's, or KEIT's, 2026 new R&D program in the battery and electronics sectors.

According to Lotte Innovate, the rapid growth of AI has driven increased adoption of high-performance graphics processing units, pushing power density per rack higher. As a result, improving power usage effectiveness, or PUE, and reducing carbon emissions have emerged as critical challenges. The direct link between rising power density and increased carbon output makes it urgent to move beyond the limits of conventional air-cooling systems and adopt next-generation heat management technology, the company said.

The R&D project focuses on early development of key technologies for reducing energy consumption and achieving carbon neutrality in air-cooled data centers — specifically an optical sensing-based distributed temperature sensing system and AI heat management system, a high-efficiency in-rack cooling system, and real-world validation at an operating data center. The consortium aims to develop a next-generation in-rack cooling system combining multi-scale distributed sensing with AI technology.

Lotte Innovate will participate in the consortium alongside the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, Chung-Ang University and SM Instrument. The partners will jointly carry out detailed research tasks over approximately five years.

Lotte Innovate plans to conduct real-world validation using its own data centers, targeting a PUE of 1.2 or below. Applying the technology to its data centers in Seoul and Yongin could reduce annual carbon emissions by approximately 22,000 metric tons if the PUE 1.2 target is met, the company said.

According to data from the Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy, domestic data centers consumed approximately 8.2 terawatt-hours of electricity annually as of 2025. Improving PUE from 1.5 to 1.2 through this research project could cut annual carbon emissions by roughly 684,000 metric tons.

Lotte Innovate plans to incorporate the technology developed through this project into its DBO business model, combining high-efficiency heat management with its integrated capabilities spanning design, construction and operation to offer a differentiated eco-friendly data center solution.

"Energy efficiency and heat management technology are the key factors determining competitiveness in data centers in the AI era," a Lotte Innovate official said. "We will advance our DBO business on the strength of the technology secured through this national R&D project and lead the development of a sustainable data center ecosystem."