China’s National Development and Reform Commission and National Energy Administration have issued a construction plan for new power systems, targeting a preliminary rollout by 2030. The initiative addresses surging electricity demands from computing power and electric vehicles while driving green energy expansion and power-computing synergy.
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The push to overhaul the nation’s energy grid comes as power consumption climbs across multiple sectors. According to official planning documents issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration, the New Power System Construction 15th Five-Year Plan sets a strategic target to establish a foundational new power system by 2030.
Surging Power Demand and the 2030 Horizon
During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, the country faces a sharp escalation in electricity needs. Driving this climb are soaring computing power usage, the rapid expansion of electric vehicle charging requirements, and the steady, rigid growth of industrial and residential consumption. News reporting indicates that national average annual electricity increments will reach roughly 600 billion kilowatt-hours—an annual surge equivalent to the total electricity consumption of a medium-sized economic state.
To visualize the sheer physical scale of this grid transformation, consider projects like the ±800 kV Yubei Converter Station for the Xinjiang Electricity into Chongqing transmission corridor, photographed during the morning light on July 30. Such massive infrastructure projects form the backbone of a system designed to handle unprecedented geographic loads.
Green Energy Targets for the New Power Supply
Meeting this immense new demand requires a fundamental shift in how power is generated. The newly released plan outlines a target for 2030 wherein a green and low-carbon electricity supply configuration takes solid shape. Non-fossil energy generation is slated to reach 50 percent of total generation.
Breaking down the specific technological capacities, official projections place conventional hydropower generation capacity at approximately 410 million kilowatts. Nuclear power capacity is expected to stand at roughly 110 million kilowatts, while biomass, solar thermal, geothermal, and ocean energy installations combined will reach about 65 million kilowatts. In places like Hohhot, installations such as the Inner Mongolia Huadian New Energy Company’s Horinger Wind-Solar-Storage Power Station illustrate the physical reality of this diversified green energy push on the ground.
Smart Grids and Electric Vehicle Infrastructure
Beyond generation, the physical and digital architecture of the grid itself must evolve. By 2030, the blueprint aims to build a safe, reliable, green, low-carbon, robust, and intelligently flexible modern grid. This network will fully unlock its role as a resource-allocation platform and service mechanism, achieving high-level accommodation for over 2.8 billion kilowatts of new energy sources.
Vehicle charging infrastructure scales up alongside these generation targets. The construction plan details an EV charging network robust enough to support more than 110 million electric vehicle trips—a necessity reflected at urban facilities like the electric vehicle fast-charging station at the Taizhou Electric Warm Current Urban Service Center in Jiangsu, where motorists plug in daily.
Power and Computing Synergy at the Edge
As industry watchers frequently note, the ultimate limit of computing power is electricity. The newly released framework mandates strategies to empower computing with electricity, and drive electricity with computing while aggressively raising the proportion of green electricity utilized by computing facilities.
Data from the China Electricity Council highlights the scale of this digital-industrial convergence. National computing power electricity consumption is projected to climb by more than 100 billion kilowatt-hours annually during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. By 2030, total computing power electricity consumption is expected to hit 800 billion kilowatt-hours—accounting for roughly 6 percent of total societal electricity consumption.
Projects addressing this intersection are already taking shape in arid landscapes. At the edge of the Tengger Desert in Zhongwei, Ningxia, the Datang Zhongwei Cloud Base Data Center utilizes a dedicated 2-million-kilowatt green energy new energy supply project, capturing clean power right where the digital infrastructure demands it.
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