人工智能（AI）等技术的蓬勃发展带动了中国数据中心的“爆发式增长”，同时也推高了能源消耗和碳排放。
截至2023年底，中国以449个数据中心的数量位居亚太地区之首。
国际能源署（IEA）最新报告显示，2024年中国数据中心用电量已占全球数据中心用电总量的25%，成为仅次于美国的全球第二大电力消耗国。
与各国情况类似，中国数据中心用电量预计将在未来几年持续快速增长，人工智能的兴起是重要推动因素之一。
不过，当前实际需求规模及未来增速仍存在不确定性。
现阶段，其他驱动因素对电力需求增长的影响仍远大于数据中心。
虽然各方对数据中心的预测数据存在差异，但有报告指出，其电力需求可能从2025年的100-200TWh（太瓦时）激增至2030年的600TWh，相应的CO2排放量或将达到200MtCO2e（百万吨二氧化碳当量）。
尽管中央和地方政府已出台多项政策以应对数据中心的环境影响，但挑战依然存在。
电力需求不断增长
中国国务院援引官媒《中国日报》2021年的一份报道称，2020年中国数据中心耗电量达200TWh，约占当年全国总用电量的2.7%，预计到2030年将增至400TWh（占比3.7%）。政府最新数据显示，2022年数据中心用电量为77TWh，2025年预计为150-200TWh，2030年或达400TWh。
2025年初，彭博社援引高盛（Goldman Sachs）更高预估称，中国数据中心的电力需求“预计将增长两倍多（从目前的200TWh），到2030年可能接近600TWh”。
相比之下，国际能源署（IEA）的预测则更为保守，其预计2024年中国数据中心用电量仅为100TWh，到2027年可能翻倍。
无论从占全国电力需求的比重，还是作为需求增长的驱动力来看，数据中心的规模仍然有限。
不同机构的数据显示，当前中国数据中心用电量约占全国总用电量的0.9%至2.7%。
彭博社指出，数据中心的用电量“不到制造业的十分之一”，并提到仅2024年一年，工业用电需求就增加了300TWh。
国际能源署表示，自2022年以来，数据中心仅占新增电力需求的3%，到2027年这一比例可能升至6%。该机构认为，中国电力需求增长的主要推动力来自工业领域，包括工业电气化及供热和交通电气化。
不过，国务院发展研究中心资源与环境政策研究所副主任韩雪表示，到2025年底，数据中心相关的CO2排放量预计将占全国总排放量的1%。
建设“绿色数据中心”
2021年，中国宣布了一项为期三年的行动计划，旨在建设“高效、清洁、集约、循环”的“新型数据中心”。
该行动计划包括提高数据中心PUE（电能利用效率）的措施。PUE是衡量数据中心能源效率最常用的指标。
其计算方式是将数据中心总能耗除以IT设备能耗。该比值越高，表明数据中心的能效越低。
截至行动计划结束，全国数据中心平均PUE已从上年的1.54降至1.48。
2024年提出的新目标是到2025年将大型数据中心的PUE控制在1.25以下。相比之下，拥有欧洲最多数据中心的德国要求现有数据中心从2027年起平均PUE需达到1.5。
与此同时，中国于2022年启动了备受期待的“东数西算”国家工程，旨在处理东部人口稠密省份产生的数据。该项目鼓励在西部太阳能和风能资源丰富的地区建设新数据中心，以支持东部繁忙的大都市。
根据该工程规划，中西部地区的数据中心将处理更多非实时云计算需求，如离线分析和存储备份，而对时效性要求高的数据服务仍由东部地区提供。
内蒙古等北方地区的地方政府也出台了配套政策，推动数据中心与可再生能源设施协同建设。
此外，北京地方政府已为数据中心提供资金支持，用于改善其PUE。而南方科技中心广东省则选择将部分数据中心建在海底，以减少冷却需求并降低能耗。
自2020年起，中国政府持续跟踪数据中心能源转型进展。2024年最新数据显示，全国已有50余个数据中心达到“绿色”能源标准，其中国家电网1个、互联网企业14个。
面临可再生能源挑战
到2030年，中国数据中心预计将消耗400TWh至600TWh的电力，相关排放量可能达到200MtCO2e。
当前，中国可再生能源资源主要集中在北方地区，而电力需求仍集中在东南沿海。这意味着，即便有“东数西算”工程的支持，数据中心通常也依赖于长距离输电来使用可再生能源。
“绿色电力在数据中心行业应用前景广阔，但仍面临诸多挑战。”绿色和平气候与能源资深项目主任吕歆说。
她向Carbon Brief指出：“完成跨省绿色电力交易仍然非常困难。”她解释道，这主要受限于可再生能源发电的不稳定性以及长距离输电线路的高昂运维成本。
中国已出台相关政策，支持绿电直供数据中心，并建设了配备专用可再生能源和储能设施的“绿色电力产业园区”。
“这些政策的推进和市场机制的完善将促进数据中心使用绿电。”吕歆补充道。
另一项挑战是数据中心的用水需求。由于需要大量冷却用水，数据中心可能加剧西部和北部地区本就紧张的水资源压力。
为应对这一问题，北京、宁夏和甘肃等地政府已出台强制性措施，要求提升数据中心用水效率，并逐步淘汰电力和水效率低下的数据中心。
随着数据中心规模不断扩大以满足人工智能运算需求，未来可能出现更多耗电量达数千兆瓦的”超大规模”数据中心，这将带来更大的电力供应压力。在国家整体电力结构中，采用更清洁的燃料组合有助于减少排放。
但研究机构SemiAnalysis指出，由于中国对煤炭的依赖，当前中国数据中心“在排放方面处于明显劣势”。
目前煤炭在中国能源结构中占比约60.5%。国际能源署数据显示，中国大部分数据中心所在的东部地区，约70%电力来自煤电。不过该机构预测，2030年后可再生能源与核能的快速发展将“推动煤炭的退出”。
该报告预计，到2035年，可再生能源和核能将“共同满足中国数据中心60%的电力供应”。
The post 解读：中国如何应对数据中心能源增长的需求 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based