China's tech firms ramp up green push to combat high levels of power use

BEIJING－China's internet industry has seen robust growth in recent decades, but its data centers, large-scale servers and cellular base stations are consuming energy at a faster rate. Therefore, China's technology firms have begun to work on green solutions.

The State Grid Energy Research Institute said in a recent report that the electricity consumption by data centers alone in 2020 is estimated to have exceeded 200 billion kilowatt-hours, accounting for 2.7 percent of the country's total electricity consumption.

By 2030, data center electricity consumption in China will exceed 400 billion kWh, accounting for 3.7 percent of the country's total electricity consumption, the report added.

"The electricity consumption of China's internet industry is growing at an annual rate of about 10 percent. It will double in seven or eight years, and become a major source of energy consumption in the future," Wang Yuanfeng, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, told Xinhua.

Wang, a carbon emissions reduction expert and an advocate of green development, said enterprises in the sector should act quickly to build greener internet infrastructure.

Chinese tech giants like Huawei and Tencent have been trying to build a zero-carbon internet industry.

During the Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2021 held in February, Huawei unveiled its solution for a zero-carbon network, including minimizing base stations, server rooms and data centers alongside wider use of green electricity.

Zhou Taoyuan, vice-president of Huawei and president of its Digital Power Product Line, said Huawei can reduce energy consumption by using high-performance, low-power demand and highly-integrated servers, and minimize the size of base stations.

Its data centers can use indirect evaporative cooling to consume 17 percent less energy compared to traditional chilled water solutions, Zhou said.

Yao Yong, senior vice-president of Sugon Energy, said the improvement of liquid cooling technology is the best way to improve data center energy efficiency.

"It can improve server stability, efficiency and service life. The data centers can be more environmentally friendly with less noise and more recycled spare heat," Yao said.

Tencent has chosen regions with sufficient green energy to build its data centers, such as Huailai, Hebei province, that have abundant wind power capacity, or Qingyuan, Guangdong province, with its abundant hydropower resources.

In Qingyuan, besides relying on hydropower, data centers use high-efficiency power modules and free cooling methods utilizing natural cold sources to reduce the Power Usage Effectiveness value down to 1.25.

PUE is a measurement of how efficiently a computer data center uses its power. The lower the PUE, the greener the data center.

In 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Government Offices Administration and the National Energy Administration jointly issued a guideline to promote green data centers, proposing that by 2022, the PUE value of the country's newly built large and super-large data centers should be below 1.4.

All these measures are a part of the country's efforts to achieve green high-quality development.

According to this year's Government Work Report, China will draw up an action plan to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and improve its industrial structure and energy mix.

Tencent has adopted "tri-supply" technology to combine the supply of power, heating and cooling at its data centers to improve the comprehensive efficiency of energy use.

It also uses clean energy generated by rooftop photovoltaic systems. At the Qingyuan data center, the total installed capacity of rooftop photovoltaic systems now stands at 13.3 megawatt peak (mWp).

Tencent said the use of tri-supply at its data centers can save 3,500 metric tons of standard coal and cut 23,300 tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year, which is equivalent to planting 36,000 trees annually.

Even a small improvement in energy usage efficiency within the internet infrastructure will make a big difference, Wang said.

Wang called on Chinese internet firms to spread their carbon neutrality technologies to wider fields and empower traditional industries to cut more carbon emissions.

Huawei's smart photovoltaic projects combine artificial intelligence, cloud computing and traditional photovoltaic stations. By directing solar panels to actively follow sunlight, a smart photovoltaic station can generate up to 18.7 percent more electricity than a traditional one.

According to Huawei, its green power generation and efficient electricity consumption sectors have generated 325 billion kWh of green electricity so far and saved 10 billion kWh of power, equivalent to planting 220 million trees.

Pony Ma, chairman of Tencent and a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress, put forward a proposal on the peaking of carbon emissions and carbon neutrality during the fourth session of the 13th NPC.

The proposal said that tech firms can provide green solutions for sectors like traditional energy to cut carbon emissions, such as using AI to optimize boiler combustion rates in thermal power plants and flexibly allocate electricity.

Xinhua