Another key to reaching carbon peak and carbon neutrality - "Counting in the East and Counting in the West" is officially launched

Therefore, "Eastern data and Western calculation" can also be simply understood as: by building a computing power network, the data computing needs of the developed eastern coastal areas are handed over to the data centers in the western inland areas. Processing, calculation, storage, feedback, etc.

By analogy, it is found that every major national-level project such as the "South-to-North Water Diversion" and "West-to-East Gas Transmission" are based on practical factors. For example, there is plenty of water in the south but drought in the north, and natural gas reserves in the west. Abundant and insufficient in the east, these problems are often difficult to solve within this region. In contrast, computing power itself is not a scarce resource, and there is no saying about where data centers can and cannot be built. Therefore, the imbalance of “numbering in the east and calculating in the west” is mainly reflected in other aspects, such as energy, which is the key to the operation of data centers.

As the cornerstone of the digital economy, data centers are also recognized as high energy-consuming industries. Statistics from China Telecom show that its data centers consumed a total of 5.6 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2021, accounting for 20% of the total electricity consumption. Moreover, even under the current national background of energy conservation and carbon reduction, the proportion of electricity consumption in data centers is still rising year by year, from about 2% in 2018 to 3%, and is expected to exceed 4% by 2025. .

High energy consumption also brings dual cost pressures of electricity bills and environmental protection to enterprises, which is restricting the development of data centers in first- and second-tier cities. In contrast, clean energy resources such as wind, solar, hydropower, etc. are relatively abundant in the central and western regions, and industrial electricity demand is not high, and electricity prices are generally low. Building data centers there can help companies greatly reduce costs.

At the same time, the temperature difference in the western region is large, which can also provide natural cooling conditions for the data center. It is understood that data center cooling energy consumption is also very prominent. A very large data center may consume more than 100 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, of which cooling power consumption accounts for nearly 40%.

The "Implementation Plan for Implementing the Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality Target and Promoting the Green and High-Quality Development of New Infrastructure such as Data Centers and 5G" clearly mentions that "the average PUE of new large and ultra-large data centers across the country must be reduced to 1.3 Below, the national hub node further drops below 1.25, and the green and low-carbon level reaches the goal of reaching 4A or above."

And "numbering in the east and counting in the west" is the most critical move.

On the other hand, the industrial investment brought about by “digitizing in the east and calculating in the west” also plays an important role in promoting the local consumption of clean energy in the central and western regions. The relevant person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission revealed that currently, the green power usage rate of data centers is around 20%. With the implementation of the “Eastern Data and Western Counting” project, a large number of data centers will be transferred to the central and western regions, which will increase the local cleanliness requirements. Energy use. If the proportion of green electricity can be increased to about 80%, by 2025, the construction of data centers alone can reduce Beijing's total carbon emissions by nearly 2.0%.

In short, from the perspective of clean energy dispatch and energy conservation and carbon reduction, the advantages of “counting in the east and counting in the west” are very obvious.