China’s secret weapon in AI race with US? Lots of cheap energy
Summary
China has an advantage in the race to develop artificial intelligence (AI) because it has access to large amounts of cheap electricity to power data centres. These data centres use a lot of energy to run AI models, and China is investing heavily in renewable energy and building data centres in areas with abundant clean power.Key Facts
- Data centres run AI chips and need a huge amount of electricity, sometimes as much as millions of homes.
- China generates over twice as much electricity as the United States and plans to increase this gap by investing in energy infrastructure.
- Much of China’s new power capacity comes from renewable sources like solar and wind energy.
- China’s “East Data, West Computing” plan places new data centres in less populated inland areas where renewable energy is plentiful.
- A large wind and solar project in Ningxia is China’s first major renewable energy project directly linked to a cloud data centre.
- The US still has more data centres overall and spends much more on AI data centre infrastructure than China.
- China’s data centre racks have grown 30% per year from 2016 to 2023.
- Experts say cheap, stable, and low-carbon electricity will be a big advantage in building AI infrastructure.
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