China’s big technology companies are making little progress in meeting their renewable energy targets at a time when electricity consumption in these sectors is expected to soar due to demand for artificial intelligence and cloud services, according to a report from Greenpeace East Asia, which called on the tech giants to take stronger action to tackle climate change.
The environmental group released a report on Thursday tracking the renewable energy usage of China’s top 25 cloud providers and data center operators, which account for more than half of China’s cloud market and more than 60 percent of its data center market.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Baidu Inc. took the top three spots in the ranking of 10 cloud providers for renewable energy purchasing, carbon reduction measures and targets, and data transparency. GDS, Chindata and VNET Group topped the list of 15 data center operators for renewable energy procurement.
“Over the past two years, some major companies have reported significant progress in renewable energy consumption,” said Liu Xin, a climate and energy activist at Greenpeace East Asia, “but progress has been uneven across the industry.”
The report also found that of those 25 companies, only eight have committed to using 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, and only six have set carbon-neutral targets by the end of the decade for direct and indirect emissions from purchased energy, known as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.
Greenpeace called on all technology companies to aim for 100% renewable energy and carbon neutrality by 2030. The environmental group said companies should also include Scope 3 emissions (indirect emissions along the value chain) in their carbon neutral goals.
Greenpeace says the rapid development of generative AI could lead to a boom in data center construction, which would require huge amounts of energy, making it crucial for tech companies to rapidly expand their renewable energy consumption.
According to a Goldman Sachs study, by 2030, the adoption of AI is expected to increase electricity demand in data centers worldwide by 160% compared to 2023.
According to a 2021 report by Greenpeace, in China, which has the world’s largest 5G network and one of the world’s largest data center industries, carbon dioxide emissions from digital infrastructure are expected to increase 152% to 310 million tonnes in 2035 compared to 2020.
The sector is expected to consume 782 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity by 2035, roughly 5-7% of the country’s total electricity consumption, according to the group, up from 2.7% in 2020.
