At Summer Davos 2026, CATL founder Zeng Yuqun said China’s grid and energy
system are sufficiently developed and incremental electricity demand from new AI
data centers is small relative to total power consumption. The key issue is fuel
mix: whether data centers run on fossil fuels or renewables. Treating data
centers as a new category supplied primarily by renewables would pose challenges
because of the land needed for PV, wind and energy storage. China’s requirement
that new data centers use 80% renewables is positive, and China can solve the
implementation challenges.
