The Tamesis
China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said on Thursday that Beijing plans to spend 4 trillion yuan ($574 billion) by the end of the century to upgrade its power grid as it accelerates its renewable energy goals and seeks to build data center capacity.
State Grid will invest between 2026 and 2030, Xinhua said, adding that fixed asset spending will increase by 40% compared with the previous five-year period.
China has ramped up wind and solar power generation capacity to meet its goal of peaking carbon emissions by 2030, but has yet to take full advantage of massive growth in renewable energy due to grid inefficiencies.
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Underutilization of renewable energy is prompting China to shift its focus from rapidly building renewable energy power plants to ensuring that more power enters the grid. analysts say.
They say more energy storage could help increase renewable energy utilization by storing excess electricity when supply exceeds demand.
Last year, official data showed that China’s renewable energy potential, especially in its remote provinces, was increasingly being untapped.
Xinhua News Agency said the planned funds will be used to support China’s west-to-east power transmission network. The network uses high-voltage wires to transport electricity from China’s less populous western regions to eastern metropolises thousands of kilometers away.
The network is also critical to the continued development of data centers in China. It plans to connect data center clusters In urban areas, computing centers are located in remote but clean energy-rich areas. A better power grid will allow China to provide sufficient power to resource-hungry computing centers in rural areas to meet high data demands in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.
State Grid plans to invest an average of 800 billion yuan per year, exceeding the 2025 record of 650 billion yuan invested by China’s major state grid operators.
The report states that by the end of 2025, inter-provincial and inter-regional power transmission will increase by 30%.
The spending will also be used to expand distribution networks in urbanized and remote areas and explore off-grid and microgrid power generation models.
- Reuters, with additional editing and input by Vishakha Saxena
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