China Electricity Council’s China Power Industry Annual Development Report 2026
(released July 14) forecasts national electricity consumption in 2026 to rise
5–6% YoY and anticipates ~400 GW of new generation capacity that year, with
renewables accounting for the bulk of additions and roughly 100 GW of new
conventional capacity — about equal to the increase in peak load. The report
projects compute-related electricity demand will add on average more than 100
bln kWh per year during the 15th Five‑Year Plan (2026–30) and reach about 800
bln kWh by 2030, roughly 6% of total national power consumption. CEC planning
director Zhang Lin said China will pursue coordinated planning of energy
resources and compute facilities to build competitive advantage; western regions
will align national compute hubs with large new‑energy bases and co‑locate
compute and power infrastructure, while eastern regions will push distributed
compute alongside distributed generation, microgrids and virtual power plants to
meet local demand.
