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 8

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.