In 2025, a sudden global power crisis erupted. On April 28, Spain and Portugal suffered massive blackouts, leaving more than 50 million people in darkness. Subways ground to a halt, hospitals rushed to switch on backup generators, and chaos spread across cities. At the same time, Latin America’s grids collapsed one after another—from Mexico to Chile—while over 500,000 U.S. households lost electricity and more than a million people in the Czech Republic endured scorching heat without power.
Yet, just as many nations were plunged into turmoil, China hit a record-breaking summer peak of 1.5 billion kilowatts in electricity demand—without a single blackout or power cut. The supply remained stable. What exactly lies behind this resilience?
AI and the Energy Hunger Crisis
The root of this crisis is the explosive growth of artificial intelligence. Training a single GPT-4 model consumes 240 million kWh of electricity, equivalent to the daily use of 28,500 Western households. Tech giants like Google and Microsoft run data centers whose daily energy demand rivals that of a mid-sized city.
In the first half of 2025, global data service electricity use jumped 33% year-on-year, with places like Hangzhou surging an astonishing 237.7% due to concentrated data centers. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that by 2030, data centers will consume 945 TWh annually—on par with all of Japan’s electricity use.
As AI’s hunger for computing power grows, the race for electricity has become a matter of national strategy.
China’s Threefold Shield
China’s energy stability rests on three pillars: multi-energy integration, ultra-high-voltage (UHV) transmission, and smart grid management.
- Clean energy leadership: Wind and solar capacity has surpassed 1.53 billion kW, overtaking coal for the first time. One in every three kilowatt-hours now comes from green energy. China produces 80% of the world’s solar panels, hosts the top four wind turbine makers, and controls 90% of global lithium battery capacity.
- UHV transmission network: Over 40 UHV lines deliver more than 400 million kW of power nationwide, sending abundant solar and wind energy from the northwest to high-demand eastern hubs. Newly launched projects in 2025, like Longdong–Shandong and Hami–Chongqing, further strengthened this backbone.
- Storage and smart scheduling: China leads globally in pumped hydro and battery storage. Virtual power plants balance supply and demand—for example, EVs in Zhejiang charge at night and feed power back by day, while 5.43 million households in Hefei participate in peak–valley pricing to ease grid strain.
Why Europe and the U.S. Faltered
In stark contrast, Western blackouts reflect aging infrastructure, energy imbalance, and coordination failures.
- In Europe, 70% of grid equipment has run for over 40 years, with only 40% digitalization. Spain sources 40% of its electricity from wind, but has just one-third of Germany’s storage capacity, leaving grids vulnerable to renewable fluctuations.
- In the U.S., Texas’s 2021 winter storm revealed the risks of overreliance on natural gas and fragile grids, where frozen pipelines and stalled wind power triggered statewide collapse.
China, however, treats the grid as a “national chessboard”, investing heavily (2024 grid investment rose 15.3%) and continuously upgrading infrastructure—preventing local failures from spiraling into nationwide crises.
The Roadblocks Ahead
China’s strength doesn’t mean it is free of challenges. Resource-rich provinces like Gansu and Xinjiang still face curtailment rates above 5%, with 60 billion kWh wasted in early 2024 due to transmission bottlenecks.
Solving the “three hurdles”—sending, storing, and using green power efficiently—remains the next big task. Projects like Qinghai’s 100% renewable-powered data centers and Huawei’s Red Sea solar-storage project in Saudi Arabia are testing integration models for AI-era demand.
Yet a bigger question looms: if AI’s electricity appetite keeps growing exponentially, can renewables keep up? The IEA warns that 20% of global data center projects could face delays by 2030 due to electricity shortages.
China currently benefits from an oversupply of green energy, but if AI reshapes the global consumption model, today’s advantage may prove temporary. Is “zero-carbon electricity” a lasting solution, or just a buffer before deeper structural challenges surface?
References
- International Energy Agency (IEA)
- China Electricity Council Reports (2024–2025)
- State Grid Corporation of China publications
