In early June, I traveled to Guyang in Guizhou County in southwestern China to visit the Data Data Center in China Mobile, which was appointed “National Center for Green Data”. The attachment is located in a group of modern buildings in the new Gui’an region. Since 2021, this group has become center Among the Internet infrastructure in China, it hosts the databases run by major technology companies.

Engineer Jian Chonghai walked in energy-saving innovations at the center-normative cooling cabinets, or Maglev air conditioning system. Unlike traditional AC, Maglev air conditioners eliminate friction in the compressors, which achieves the same cooling effect with 30-40 percent of electricity.

Jian’s focus on energy efficiency is driven by an ambitious expansion plan. The director of the product Li Haiyan also told me, training and managing artificial intelligence models will become part of their business – which may lead to high electricity consumption, carbon emissions and operating costs.

China Mobile is not alone. From large technology companies such as Alibaba, Tensent and Huawei to startups such as Deepseek, Chinese companies are imprisoned Fierce To develop artificial intelligence services.

This is a new challenge for China, especially since experts believe that Amnesty International will become one of the most intense energy -used industries in the country. The central challenge of China is how to become the world’s leading pioneer in artificial intelligence services while not endangering the climate’s work goals.

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Electricity and Computing are seen as general services-which means that it should be accessed that it is easy to reach the low cost. But to strike the climate targets in the country, it also needs to be clean and green. The big question is: How can it become reasonable and sustainable at the same time?

While the improvements of efficiency and artificial intelligence capabilities to help other sectors to remove carbons faster, building a new energy system gives priorities for renewable energy sources and meeting computing needs is very important.

Increased appetite

Electricity is expected to increase for data centers in China 170 percent Between 2024 and 2030, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Last year, databases around the world consumed about 1.5 percent of the total generated electricity, a recent report of the European Union Estimates. This class grows quickly. Mainly driven by prosecution servers, the use of electricity in data centers rises by about 12 percent annually. This is four times the pace of the total order of electricity.

The report predicts that by 2030, China and the United States will see approximately 80 percent of energy growth in the global data center.

Wang Young, Associate Professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, told me that he considers data centers one of the intensive capacitance industries in China-along with steel, cement and petrochemical.

he Estimates By 2030, Chinese data centers will demand about 105 GB of electricity, use 26.3 billion liters of water, and emit 310 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

This amount of electricity is more than half of the demand for residential electricity in China in 2024.

East data, Western computing

In 2022, China launched an initiative called East data, Western computing. Under the plan, provinces and western regions such as Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Ningxia are assigned to deal with computerized functions such as artificial intelligence training and data storage-work burdens that do not require actual time response.

Meanwhile, groups in areas such as Beijing Tyanjin-Habi, the Yangtisi River, Chong and Chongqing, and the Great Gulf region focus on actual time services such as video flow and AI Chatbot.

one Big goal From this initiative is to reduce energy consumption by taking advantage of the climate favorable in Western Chinese and abundant renewable energy. For example, the average annual temperature of Guyang of 18-20 ° C is naturally reduced from cooling needs, while internal Mongolia provides wind resources and rich solar energy.