After the peak period of domestic data center construction, pressure from energy efficiency improvement, policy compliance, and other aspects gradually emerged.
At the recent seminar on low-carbon energy driven green data centers, Zhong Xin, technical member of the Data Center Committee of the China Communications Industry Association and vice president of Guangdong Telecom Planning and Design Institute Co., Ltd., stated that intelligent computing power deployment will become the mainstream of computing power deployment. In the context of “dual carbon”, the scale of top customer base type data centers has exceeded 200MW. The growth of computing power and energy consumption, data center energy management challenges, and measures to address data center energy challenges will become important topics of concern for industry participants.
Wang Jianlei, General Manager of Siemens Energy’s Grid Technology Group, reminds that the data center industry is facing important issues such as stable supply of high reliability, fluctuating low-carbon energy, energy conservation and cost optimization balance under complex working conditions, as well as spatial challenges brought by high computing power density. In the future, the competitiveness of data centers will depend on the “four-dimensional balance” of reliability, security, economy, and sustainability.
The explosive growth of computing power and the evolution of data centers towards computing power centers
In 2022, the commercial use of ChatGPT sparked a wave of AIGC, with leading companies rapidly advancing the research and application of large models, driving the rapid growth of demand for large model training in China. In January 2025, the rapid growth of large-scale model applications triggered by DeepSeek will drive a surge in demand for intelligent computing power on the inference end. With the booming development of the digital economy, the digital center, as the core carrier of digital infrastructure, continues to increase in scale and demand.
According to the latest data from the 2025 Data Expo, as of the end of July, the total scale of intelligent computing in China was 780000 Pfops, ranking second in the world. It is expected that by the end of this year, the added value of the digital economy will reach around 49 trillion yuan, accounting for about 35% of GDP. The proportion of added value of core industries in the digital economy to GDP will be achieved ahead of schedule in the 14th Five Year Plan.
It is expected that from 2025 to 2027, driven by the demand for intelligent computing power deployment, the incremental demand for intelligent computing centers in China will reach 10.5GW, and the overall incremental demand for data centers will reach 13.8GW, ushering in a new expansion period for data centers. ”Zhong Xin’s prediction.
In its view, generative AI is driving the revolution of the artificial intelligence industry and driving explosive growth in intelligent computing power. The astonishing doubling of computing power every five months is driving the acceleration of data centers towards intelligent computing. Traditional IDC (i.e. Internet data center, computing base of digital economy, typical representative of new quality productivity) has evolved to intelligent computing center AIDC (i.e. intelligent computing center). The concept of computing network has gradually become clear, and general computing, intelligent computing and supercomputing have integrated development. Data center has evolved to computing center.
At the same time, energy-saving technologies continue to break through, and the number of small and medium-sized computing power centers has significantly increased. In the next 2-3 years, investment in large-scale infrastructure projects will slow down, and there will be a significant increase in small and medium-sized computing power centers. The intelligent transformation of traditional data centers is accelerating, and the intelligent transformation of completed data centers is currently a pain point for many users.
The energy consumption of data centers is enormous. In the future, policies will shift from dual control of total energy consumption and intensity to carbon emissions. Especially at the hub nodes, the overall planning of the ‘source network load storage’ project, the application of new technologies in green data centers and zero carbon parks will continue to evolve, “analyzed Zhong Xin.
Zhong Xin stated that in the application of new technologies, there is an evolution from air cooling to liquid cooling. After supercomputing, with the popularization of intelligent computing centers, the power of single cabinets continues to increase, promoting the rise of liquid cooling technology applications in recent years. At the same time, coupled acceleration applications such as hydrogen fuel cells and gas turbines are being utilized. Against the backdrop of the triple challenges of high reliability, green and low-carbon transformation, and energy supply stability faced by data center power systems, gas turbines have demonstrated unique solution value. The coupling of hydrogen energy, green dyes, and carbon capture technology is expected to further support the deep decarbonization transformation of data centers.
