China fuels computing boom with green power

China expands computing power, driven by demand for artificial intelligence and big data. This boom increases energy consumption, prompting a pivot to renewables. China launched its "East Data, West Computing" initiative, relocating data processing to western provinces abundant in land and renewable energy. New data centers are mandated to source at least eighty percent of their electricity from green power. A five-hundred-megawatt solar farm supplies a data center, and a one-point-five-gigawatt wind farm is under construction nearby to provide round-the-clock green power. Qinghai Province utilizes solar, wind, and hydropower to meet ninety percent of data centers' energy needs. Qinghai also operates a "Clean Energy and Green Computing Dispatching Center" for green energy distribution. Innovations include China's underwater data center off Shanghai. Powered by offshore wind, it uses the ocean's cold water for cooling, reducing power consumption over twenty-two percent and using over ninety-five percent green electricity. Data center electricity consumption doubled from eighty-two-point-four terawatt-hours in two thousand nineteen to one hundred sixty-six terawatt-hours in two thousand twenty-four, projected to reach six hundred terawatt-hours by two thousand thirty. The government implemented a plan to enhance energy efficiency, aiming to lower data center Power Usage Effectiveness, or PUE, below one-point-five by two thousand twenty-five. This push ensures energy security and addresses climate change, positioning China at the forefront of sustainable digital infrastructure.