West Java Freezes Work on BDx 640MW AI Data Center Campus Over Missing Environmental and Building Permits

JAKARTA, Investortrust.id — West Java authorities have clamped down on Singapore-based BDx Data Centers, ordering a temporary halt to construction on its 640-megawatt artificial intelligence computing campus in Jatiluhur, Purwakarta.

West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi intervened directly to freeze the mega-project after discovering that the operator had not secured essential environmental impact assessments (Amdal) or building approval certificates (PBG).

Mulyadi stressed that the provincial administration is not hostile to private capital, but insisted that technical paperwork and resource safeguards must precede heavy machinery.

"This project was halted not because it violated environmental regulations, but because the permits have not been issued," Mulyadi said in a video broadcast on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026.

Following a follow-up meeting with company executives on Sept. 30, the governor reiterated his stance via social media. "The PBG and Amdal have not been issued. Do not proceed with the project yet. Stop construction for now," Mulyadi added.

The permit freeze spotlights the growing friction between Southeast Asia’s aggressive push into artificial intelligence and local resource constraints. While Indonesia races to capture regional spillover from land- and power-constrained neighbors like Singapore and Malaysia, local regulators are raising scrutiny over the massive electrical and water consumption required to cool high-density server racks.

Permit Bottlenecks Stall Jatiluhur AI Campus

BDx initially broke ground on the Jatiluhur campus on Sept. 22, 2026, deploying civil equipment across an 8,000-square-meter (86,111-square-foot) site. The facility was designed to anchor hyperscale cloud operations and sophisticated AI computational workloads across Asian enterprise markets.

The company stated that it is currently confirming internal details regarding the shutdown order. BDx operates data centers across multiple Asian jurisdictions and has expanded its Indonesian footprint via BDx Indonesia, a joint venture alongside domestic telecom major PT Indosat Tbk (ISAT) and its enterprise arm PT Aplikanusa Lintasarta.

In January 2024, BDx Indonesia completed a Rp 2.625 trillion ($165.09 million) carrier-neutral colocation and edge site acquisition from Indosat, securing strategic landing points linked to international subsea fiber lines.

The regulatory halt in Purwakarta lands as global environmental watchdogs warn that power and water consumption from artificial intelligence data centers could double through 2030. Modern AI installations consume between 6,000 and 15,000 cubic meters (1.58 million to 3.96 million gallons) of water per day, prompting local authorities to guard regional water reservoirs closely.

Balancing Compliance With Investor Confidence

The Indonesia Data Center Provider Organization (IDPRO) stated that it respects the provincial government's decision while emphasizing that regulatory compliance and investment certainty must move hand in hand.

"For us, compliance and sustainability are inseparable parts of developing the data center industry," IDPRO Chairman Hendra Suryakusuma said on Friday.

Suryakusuma pointed out that data center facilities require multi-million-dollar capital investments committed over multi-decade cycles, making rigorous governance, spatial zoning, and environmental baselines mandatory from day one.

However, IDPRO warned that administrative bottlenecks and misaligned inter-agency coordination must not chill investor sentiment as Indonesia battles regional peers to establish itself as the premier digital infrastructure corridor.

"Indonesia is currently competing with other countries in the region to become a digital infrastructure and AI hub," Suryakusuma noted. "Both compliance and certainty cannot be set against one another."

The regulatory intervention tests an industry experiencing exponential growth. Independent market projections estimate Indonesia’s commercial data center market will more than double from $2.81 billion in 2025 to $6.08 billion by 2031, powered by soaring demand for hyperscale cloud computing and enterprise artificial intelligence processing.