9to5mac.com is reporting that Apple is planning a massive data center in Hong Kong with construction beginning early next year for operational use by 2015. Google is also working on a $300 million data center in Hong Kong and the locale is attractive because Hong Kong still has some degree of legal autonomy from China. Apple will want to be as close as possible to its most promising growth market, China, and it’s become clear from the North Carolina data center build that the company isn’t willing to outsource its data center needs. This is particularly true given that it continues to build its cloud offerings through iCloud and one day it actually may want to offer something even data heavier like streaming video rentals on iTunes. There’s no word on energy infrastructure for the potential data center but CLP, the major utility in Hong Kong serving 80 percent of the territory, uses a mix of natural gas, coal and nuclear with efforts to “promote renewable energy locally.” If Apple is truly going to source renewable energy on this one, it may have to build its own energy generation as it has chosen to do in North Carolina.