AI creates opportunities for clean energy collaboration

Industry insiders say the explosive growth of artificial intelligence could create an unexpected opening for the United States and China to work together on clean energy, a partnership they argue would benefit both countries and the broader global economy.

As data centers grow and computing demands intensify, energy has emerged as one of the most pressing constraints on AI development worldwide. Against that backdrop, observers say the complementary strengths of the world's two largest economies make collaboration not just viable, but logical.

"Technologies and products that are used, whether it's in the US or in China or in other parts of Asia, they're all very similar," said Ramkumar Krishnan, a cleantech entrepreneur and technologist with more than 20 years of experience in clean energy and advanced technologies.

"There are many ways that I think technology is a connecting piece that brings all nations together, because we all need technology to solve problems," he told China Daily.

China's annual power output has surpassed 10 trillion kilowatt-hours, more than double that of the United States and exceeding the combined power consumption of the European Union, Russia, India and Japan, according to China's National Energy Administration.

That scale gives China both experience and infrastructure that other countries could learn from, Krishnan said, particularly as nations work to intelligently manage grid capacity to meet the demands of data centers.

Renewables offer an advantage in deployment speed, he said, as a solar plant, for example, can come online in a year and a half or less, while nuclear or hydropower projects can take 10 to 15 years.

"Bringing the right portfolio of solutions that can help accelerate the adoption of energy, and bringing new energy, that could be another area that we can address the demand that we have from AI," Krishnan said.

On the US side, there's a challenge about using existing capacity more efficiently, said Krishnan.

Excess capacity

"There's a lot of excess capacity that's in the grid, but it's underutilized because it's not available all the time, or there might be certain pockets of areas that have capacity," he said. "How do we actually intelligently manage that? That's an area of pretty strong interest — how do we model how energy is used, so that we can utilize that excess capacity in different places, whether it's industries, EV charging stations."

AI itself may be part of the answer to the problem it has helped create, enabling smarter energy management systems that can match variable supply with shifting demand, he suggested.

GCL Group, a Chinese clean-energy service provider, is moving to translate this opportunity into partnerships. The company, which has developed power plant projects in California, Colorado and New York, is seeking partnerships with US AI companies to provide energy solutions for global AI infrastructure development.

"Computing demands of generative AI are driving explosive growth in the global AI data center market, while putting mounting pressure on power supplies worldwide," said Zhu Gongshan, chairman of GCL Group, during a recent visit to Silicon Valley. "As demand for computing capacity surges, energy is emerging as one of the biggest bottlenecks to AI development."

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com